The ‘Kill Bush’ T-shirt as sold on CafePress. [Source: WorldNetDaily (.com)]Rush Limbaugh’s monthly e-mail newsletter, the “Limbaugh Letter,” includes the charge that “mainstream Democrats” endorse calls to assassinate President Bush and for the suicide of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. 'Kill Bush' T-Shirts, Wishes that Bush Had Been Aborted - Limbaugh tells his readers, “Dingy Harry Reid [D-NV, the Senate Minority Leader] and those absolute wimps have nothing positive to offer anybody in this country. They’re doing nothing but trying to instill fear and loathing, forming coalitions (i.e. their new bosom buddies MoveOn.org) built on seething hatred and rage. That is why it was no real surprise when CafePress.com began selling a yellow T-shirt with a red gash and the slogan, in big words, “Kill Bush.” The whole message was, “For Gods [sic] Sake, Kill Bush, Save the United States and the Rest of the World.” This was the same website that earlier posted a T-shirt for sale with the message, “Dear Tom DeLay, Please Commit Suicide. Sincerely, Everyone.” The same left-wing inhumanity was on display last year when [Democratic Senator] Hillary Clinton spoke at the pro-abortion ‘March for Women’s Lives.‘… [P]lacards held by the marchers read: ‘If Only Barbara Bush Had Choice;’ ‘Barbara Bush Chose Poorly;’ and ‘The Pope’s Mother Had No Choice.’ As I said, no shocker. This is the mainstream of the Democratic Party and their wacko voters and supporters.” [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 177-178] (CafePress removed the “Kill Bush” shirt after receiving numerous complaints; after removing it, the online store noted that CafePress “is an automated service” and “[h]ate related materials are a violation of its terms of service…” [WorldNetDaily, 4/13/2005] Washington, DC, artist Christopher Goodwin created the Tom DeLay shirt and marketed it on CafePress. He removed the listing after a week, during which he was the only one to buy a shirt and he received numerous complaints about the shirt being in poor taste. But before removing the listing, his shirt was the subject of an article on the conservative Drudge Report, after which he received a torrent of angry e-mails—and six more shirt sales. [Washington City Paper, 4/15/2005] ) Exaggerating Differences, Drawing Extreme Conclusions - Authors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella will later observe, “This is an in-group rhetoric seeking to reinforce the views of a like-minded audience eager to draw extreme conclusions about Democrats. The strategy capitalizes on tendencies scholars of in- and out-groups have repeatedly observed: that members of a group exaggerate their differences with out-groups, believing out-group members to be rather homogeneous and in-group members less so, and believing members of out-groups to be less human than those in the in-group. Studies also show that people in one group think that the attitudes of an opposed group are more extreme than they actually are…” Jamieson and Cappella argue that Limbaugh’s “in-group” of listeners and readers, often agitated by what the authors call “visceral” language and emotion, has less trouble believing that the “out-group,” Democrats, would solidly back such extremist calls for presidential assassinations and coerced suicides, than would a more disparate group of political observers. “Flooded by the evocative cascade,” they will write, “the reader is likely to grant the implications in the ambiguously referenced (Is Senator Clinton the object of the same left-wing inhumanity or the sentiments expressed in the placards at the rally?) bridging inference (“the same left-wing inhumanity”) and conclude that Hillary Clinton abetted, if she did not outright endorse, the notion that the incumbent president and the pope should have been aborted and the incumbent president killed. At the same time, the audience is unlikely to challenge the conclusion that the T-shirt statements reflect the Democratic mainstream… If these are the sentiments of the Democratic mainstream, then, of course, the Democratic Party is the home of ‘wacko voters and supporters.’” [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 177-178]

Anti-abortion activist Eric Rudolph, who has pled guilty to bombing abortion clinics (see January 16, 1997 and January 29, 1998), a gay and lesbian nightclub (see February 21, 1997), and the 1996 Olympics (see July 27, 1996 and After and October 14, 1998) in a series of court proceedings, releases an 11-page “manifesto” that explains the rationale behind his bombing spree. In the document, which the Associated Press terms “[a] sometimes-rambling, sometimes-reflective” statement, Rudolph writes that he considers himself a “warrior” against abortion, which he calls murder, and the US government, which he charges with permitting the “slaughter” of “innocent babies.” Rudolph will receive four life sentences without parole in return for the prosecution removing the death penalty from consideration (see July 18, 2005). He has also alerted authorities to a large stash of explosives he created while hiding in the mountains of western North Carolina. Abortion Providers, Lawmakers 'Legitimate Targets' in 'War' - The “holocaust” of abortion is his driving impulse, Rudolph writes in his statement. Anyone who supports or allows abortion, he writes, is an enemy deserving of death. “Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified… in an attempt to stop it,” he writes, “whether these agents of the government are armed or otherwise they are legitimate targets in the war to end this holocaust.… Abortion is murder. And when the regime in Washington legalized, sanctioned, and legitimized this practice, they forfeited their legitimacy and moral authority to govern.” Rationale for Bombing Olympics - Rudolph also writes that the Olympic bombing was envisioned as the first in a weeklong campaign of bombings designed to shut down the Olympics, held in Atlanta, and embarrass the US government as a result. He had hoped to use high-grade explosives to shut down the Atlanta power grid and force the termination of the Olympics, but was unable to procure the explosives, and calls the results of his bombing a “disaster.” He writes: “In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington, millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games. Even though the conception and purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song Imagine by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 Games even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these despicable ideals, the purpose of the attack on July 27 was to confound, anger, and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.” Racist, Homophobic Views - In the document, Rudolph attacks homosexuality as an “aberrant” lifestyle, and blames the government for condoning it. He denies holding racist or anti-Semitic views [Associated Press, 4/13/2005; Associated Press, 4/14/2005; CNN, 4/19/2005] , though his ex-sister-in-law Deborah Rudolph told reporters that Rudolph believed abortion was part of a plot to undermine the white race; she said, “He felt like if woman continued to abort their white babies, that eventually the white race would become a minority instead of a majority.” Others have said that Rudolph told them he believed the Holocaust never occurred. [CNN, 6/15/2002]'Worse to Him than Death' - After Rudolph’s guilty plea, Deborah Rudolph says of the prospects of his life in jail, “Knowing that he’s living under government control for the rest of his life, I think that’s worse to him than death.” [Associated Press, 4/13/2005] Rudolph, Prisoner No. 18282-058, will be incarcerated in a tiny cell in the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado, colloquially known as the “Supermax” facility. Rudolph lives on “bomber’s row” along with Ted Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996), Islamist terrorist Ramzi Yousef (see February 7, 1995), “shoe bomber” Richard Reid (see December 22, 2001), and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). After his imprisonment, he releases a statement that reads in part, “The talking heads on the news [will] opine that I am ‘finished,’ that I will ‘languish broken and unloved in the bowels of some supermax,’ but I say to you people that by the grace of God I am still here—a little bloodied, but emphatically unbowed.” [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]

The White House attempts to explain the apparently illegal refusal to allow citizens who may disagree with President Bush to attend his rallies and public events (see February 3, 2005, March 22, 2005, and March 21, 2005) by alleging that bands of liberal protesters are conspiring to disrupt those events. “There is an active campaign underway to try and disrupt and disturb his events in hopes of undermining his objective of fixing Social Security,” says White House spokesman Trent Duffy, referring to Bush’s recent swing through the US to whip up public support for his plans to privatize Social Security. “If there is evidence there are people planning to disrupt the president at an event, then they have the right to exclude those people from those events.” Others disagree. Representative Marilyn Musgrove (R-CO) says through a spokesman: “He is the president, and regardless of affiliation, everybody should have the opportunity to go and see the president. It shouldn’t be the job of anybody to make sure the crowd is 100 percent sympathetic.” White House officials counter that all they are doing is attempting to prevent threats and disruptions. If they believe an individual will attempt to disrupt an event, they say, they will have that person removed before anything occurs. Linda Coates, a Fargo, North Dakota city commissioner who was prevented from attending a February Bush rally when her name turned up on a “blacklist” maintained by the White House, says the Bush administration is going far beyond protecting Bush from hecklers and security threats. “These events are clearly so carefully crafted that they can’t be considered ‘open forums’ anyway,” Coates says. “They are pep rallies. This is a new thing in terms of having an administration that tries to have absolute tight control on public perception of events and of reality.” American Enterprise Institute political analyst John Fortier says the tightly controlled events are part of the Bush administration’s “permanent campaign.” He adds: “I don’t know if it is working, but I don’t fault it too much that these rallies aren’t open forums for debate. When the president goes out to the country, it’s meant to be on his turf.” Diana DeGette (D-CO) says that the strategy isn’t working. “In politics, the best way to win support for a controversial policy is to sell it to people who are still undecided,” she says. “It appears that this White House has so little confidence in the president’s Social Security privatization plan, however, that administration officials are not allowing even undecided Americans into the president’s events.” Duffy denies that Democrats or other possible Bush critics are denied access to Bush’s rallies and events, but refuses to give details about how citizens are screened or chosen to ask questions of Bush during these events. Duffy does say: “There are steps being taken to ensure the president has a degree of order at these events. I think the president of the United States deserves to have a level of respect when he holds town meetings or any other forum.” In previous events, prospective attendees were: turned away for wearing T-shirts supporting Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry; pressured to volunteer for the 2004 Bush presidential campaign; told to fill out questionnaires asking for names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and pledges of support for the president; preemptively banned due to membership of Democratic organizations; and quizzed as to their support for Bush and his policies. Mark Udall (D-CO) says through a spokesman: “The president would be better served if he were to listen to dissenting views at these town hall meetings. It would probably help him make the changes he needed to better his policy on Social Security.” [Fox News, 4/22/2005]

Bill James. [Source: Michael-in-Norfolk (.com)]Bill James, a Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) commissioner, sends a fiery email in response to fellow commissioners’ announcement that they would advocate for the county’s provision of domestic partner benefits for gay couples. James, a Republican, writes in part: “You really think that a pool of people (homosexuals) where 45 percent of them eat feces from the rear end of another male is ‘normal’? If you do, you are frankly nuts. A lifestyle where one of their past times is buying gerbils and hamsters from the pet store and cramming them up their rears in an activity called feltching? A group of people who like to urinate on their partners and call them ‘golden showers’? Where one of the honored members of the Gay Alliance is an organization called the ‘Man-Boy Love Association’ that promotes sex with underage boys? That behavior is worthy of protection? That behavior is worthy to be taught in our schools? To our children? You are one sick ‘Independent, white, married-heterosexual, Presbyterian’ if you do.” James cites what he says are “unimpeachable” statistics “proving” his claims, and cites Robert D. Raiford, a news reader and editorial commentator on the local comedy morning radio show John-Boy and Billy, as the source of the statistics. He goes on to claim that the US Centers for Disease Control in 1972 found that 50 percent of male homosexuals have had over 500 different sexual partners, and cites other statistics that he says proves 73 percent of male homosexuals are pedophiles, and 15 percent practice bestiality. Progressive blogger Pam Spaulding reprints the email the next day, and states that James’s “statistics” are inaccurate. [Pam Spaulding, 4/30/2005] James will not apologize for his comments, and in 2009 will insult another commissioner over the loss of her son to AIDS (see December 17, 2009).

President and Mrs. Bush enjoy a laugh at the Correspondents’ Dinner. [Source: MSNBC]The highlight of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (an annual fete where, as author and media critic Frank Rich will write, “reporters suck up to people in power [and] clamor to rub shoulders with… C-list celebrities”) is the scripted comedy stylings of First Lady Laura Bush. The media will report that Mrs. Bush “steals the show” with her jibes at her husband. She “interrupts” President Bush as he is beginning his address to the assemblage; Rich will write that her move “prompt[s] the ballroom full of reporters to leap to their feet and erupt in a roar of sycophancy like partisan hacks at a political convention.” She tells a risque joke involving her husband, a horse, and masturbation, receiving roars of adulation. The entire act is carefully scripted and staged, but reporters gush over it in the next morning’s news, even as they acknowledge it for the public relations stunt it truly is. “We truly saw the real Laura Bush,” one reporter writes. Others write of Mrs. Bush’s “most humanizing populist riff, [her] affection for the runaway new television hit Desperate Housewives,” but few note that her press secretary later acknowledged that Mrs. Bush had never actually seen an episode. Rich wonders at the reception such a performance, featuring off-color masturbation jokes and lies about television-watching habits, might have received from conservative journalists had the performer been named Hillary Clinton. “The press corps’ eagerness to facilitate and serve as dress extras in what amounted to an administration promotional video,” Rich will write, “was a metaphor for just how much the reality-based community had been co-opted by Bush’s own reality over the past four years.” [Associated Press, 5/1/2005; Rich, 2006, pp. 174-175]

Congress passes a law clarifying and expanding its earlier ban on government propaganda. The new law bans the use of federal money to produce any news story (see March 2005) that does not openly acknowledge the government’s role in producing and slanting that story. The new law dramatically restricts the ability of the federal government to produce and disseminate fake news stories (VNRs—see March 15, 2004 and May 19, 2004) in local news broadcasts. [Savage, 2007, pp. 173]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that “multicultural curricula” implemented in US public schools teach students that America would have been better off had white Europeans never come to American shores. Limbaugh says: “Multicultural curricula, multicultural training [is] understanding that you’re no better than anybody else and understanding the Indians got screwed, that it’s really their country. Understanding that white Europeans brought to this country syphilis and other disease, environmentalism, sexism, racism, and homophobia. If it weren’t for all of that, this really would be a great country if white Europeans had just stayed where they were.” [Media Matters, 5/11/2005] Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, has called multicultural education an “important requirement” for American children. [White House, 10/5/2001]

The House of Representatives, as part of its trimming of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)‘s proposed $31.8 billion appropriations for 2006, cuts the $136,000 allocated for a liaison to Hollywood. The DHS had planned to pay former actress Bobbie Faye Ferguson, a veteran of such television shows as The Dukes of Hazzard and Designing Women, to work with Hollywood producers and scriptwriters to generate films and television shows that would portray the department in a positive light (see March 8, 2005). DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said of Ferguson’s position, “This is a similar function that numerous other federal agencies possess, and is necessary in helping those in multimedia make their projects as accurate as possible.” One example Roehrkasse gave was the propensity for some movies to inaccurately refer to the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS), which is now part of DHS. But Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) is unconvinced by Roerhkasse’s arguments, noting that the DHS should not be spending its money on Hollywood projects. “We should direct this money to actually help the people who respond and save lives,” she says. “The people of this country have high expectations about their security after being violated on 9/11.” Musgrave successfully proposes that the salary for Ferguson be redirected to funding state and local disaster teams. [Salon, 5/18/2005]

President Bush, on a tour to promote his administration’s proposals to privatize Social Security, tells an audience in Greece, New York, “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” [White House, 5/24/2005] Washington Post reporter Dan Froomkin calls the line “a revealing ad-lib.” [Washington Post, 5/25/2005] Author and media critic Frank Rich later notes that “catapulting the propaganda” does not have the desired effect in this instance: “Support for his plan actually declined as his tour played out, and it was dead on arrival in a Congress his party controlled.” [Rich, 2006, pp. 197]

Jed Babbin. [Source: The Intelligence Summit]Three days before a group of military analysts are taken to Guantanamo by the Pentagon for an orchestrated “tour” (see June 24-25, 2005), one planning e-mail from Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence gives weight to the belief that the tour was arranged to prepare the analysts to deliver scripted talking points before the cameras (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). Lawrence notes the importance of scheduling the Guantanamo trip to ensure that an analyst for the American Spectator, Jed Babbin, can participate: “He is hosting a number of radio shows this summer. I would have to think he would have every member of Congress on to talk about their trip together—a definite plus for us looking to expand the echo chamber.” Babbin will respond with a Spectator article lambasting Democratic critics of Guantanamo, and will be given an invitation to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News talk show. Pentagon public relations official Lawrence Di Rita is quite pleased by Babbin’s work, and in an e-mail to other Pentagon officials, says: “We really should try to help [Babbin]. He is consistently solid and helpful.” [Salon, 5/9/2008]

Donald Shepperd, on the June 24 CNN broadcast. [Source: CNN]Within hours of returning from a Pentagon-sponsored “fact-finding” trip to the Guantanamo detention facility (see June 24-25, 2005), CNN military analyst Don Shepperd, as planned (see June 25, 2005), extolls the virtues of the Pentagon’s handling of detainees on a lineup of CNN news broadcasts. As per his most recent briefing, he does not mention the case of Mohammed al-Khatani (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003), who has suffered extensive brutality at the hands of his captors. Instead, his “analyses” are so uniformly laudatory that, as commentator Glenn Greenwald will observe, they are “exactly what it would have been had [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld himself written the script.” After returning from his half-day visit, he participates in a live telephone interview with CNN anchor Betty Nguyen. He opens with the observation: “I tell you, every American should have a chance to see what our group saw today. The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here, in my opinion, are totally false. What we’re seeing is a modern prison system of dedicated people, interrogators and analysts that know what they are doing. And people being very, very well-treated. We’ve had a chance to tour the facility, to talk to the guards, to talk to the interrogators and analysts. We’ve had a chance to eat what the prisoners eat. We’ve seen people being interrogated. And it’s nothing like the impression that we’re getting from the media. People need to see this, Betty.… I have been in prisons and I have been in jails in the United States, and this is by far the most professionally-run and dedicated force I’ve ever seen in any correctional institution anywhere.” Shepperd watched an interrogation, and he describes it thusly: “[T]hey’re basically asking questions. They just ask the same questions over a long period of time. They get information about the person’s family, where they’re from, other people they knew. All the type of things that you would want in any kind of criminal investigation. And these were all very cordial, very professional. There was laughing in two of them that we…” Nguyen interrupts to ask, “Laughing in an interrogation?” and Shepperd replies: “In the two of them that we watched. Yes, indeed. It’s not—it’s not like the impression that you and I have of what goes on in an interrogation, where you bend people’s arms and mistreat people. They’re trying to establish a firm professional relationship where they have respect for each other and can talk to each other. And yes, there were laughing and humor going on in a couple of these things. And I’m talking about a remark made where someone will smirk or laugh or chuckle.” In another CNN interview three days later, Shepperd reiterates and expands upon his initial remarks, and says of the detainees: “[W]e have really gotten a lot of information to prevent attacks in this country and in other countries with the information they’re getting from these people. And it’s still valuable.” CNN does not tell its viewers that Shepperd is president of The Shepperd Group, a defense lobbying and consulting firm. [CNN, 6/24/2005; Salon, 5/9/2008]

CNN analyst Donald Shepperd. [Source: New York Times]With criticism of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility reaching new heights, new allegations of abuse from UN human rights experts, Amnesty International receiving plenty of media exposure for calling the facility “the gulag of our times” (see May 25, 2005), and many calling for the facility’s immediate closure, the Pentagon counters by launching the latest in its propaganda counteroffensive designed to offset and blunt such criticism (see April 20, 2008). The Pentagon and White House’s communications experts place a select group of around ten retired military officers, all who regularly appear on network and cable news broadcasts as “independent military analysts,” on a jet usually used by Vice President Dick Cheney, and fly them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of the facility. [New York Times, 4/20/2008]A Four-Hour Tour - During the three-hour flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Cuba, the analysts are given several briefings by various Pentagon officials. After landing, but before being taken to the detention facility, they are given another 90-minute briefing. The analysts spend 50 minutes lunching with some of the soldiers on base, then begin their tour. They spend less than 90 minutes viewing the main part of the Guantanamo facility, Camp Delta; in that time, they watch an interrogation, look at an unoccupied cellblock, and visit the camp hospital. They spend ten minutes at Camp V and 35 minutes at Camp X-Ray. After less than four hours in Guantanamo’s detention facilities, they depart for Washington, DC. [Salon, 5/9/2008] This is the first of six such excursions, all designed to prepare the analysts for defending the administration’s point of view and counter the perception that Guantanamo is a haven for abusive treatment of prisoners. During the flight to the facility, during the tour, and during the return flight, Pentagon officials hammer home the message they want the analysts to spread: how much money has been spent on improving the facility, how much abuse the guards have endured, and the extensive rights and privileges granted to the detainees. Producing Results - The analysts provide the desired results. All ten immediately appear on television and radio broadcasts, denouncing Amnesty International, challenging calls to close the facility, and assuring listeners that the detainees are being treated humanely. Donald Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, tells CNN just hours after returning from Guantanamo, “The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false.” The next morning, retired Army General Montgomery Meigs appears on NBC’s flagship morning show, Today, and says: “There’s been over $100 million of new construction [at Guantanamo]. The place is very professionally run.” Transcripts of the analysts’ appearances are quickly circulated among senior White House and Pentagon officials, and cited as evidence that the Bush administration is winning the battle for public opinion. [New York Times, 4/20/2008]

Retired Air Force General Donald Shepperd, a CNN news analyst, returns from a “fact-finding” trip to Guantanamo Bay (see June 24-25, 2005) prepared to provide Pentagon talking points to CNN audiences. Shepperd is remarkably candid about his willingness to serve as a Pentagon propagandist, writing in a “trip report” he files with his handlers, “Did we drink the ‘Government Kool-Aid?’—of course, and that was the purpose of the trip.” He acknowledges that “a one day visit does not an expert make” (Shepperd and his fellow analysts spent less than four hours touring the entire facility, all in the company of Pentagon officials), and notes that “the government was obviously going to put its best foot forward to get out its message.” He adds that “former military visitors are more likely to agree with government views than a more appropriately skeptical press.” Shepperd also sends an e-mail to Pentagon officials praising the trip and asking them to “let me know if I can help you.” He signs the e-mail, “Don Shepperd (CNN military analyst).” Shepperd’s e-mail is forwarded to Larry Di Rita, a top public relations aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Di Rita’s reply shows just how much control the Pentagon wields over the analysts. Di Rita replies, “OK, but let’s get him briefed on al-Khatani so he doesn’t go too far on that one.” Di Rita is referring to detainee Mohammed al-Khatani (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003), who had been subjected to particularly brutal treatment. Shepperd will, as planned, praise the Guantanamo detainee program on CNN in the days and hours following his visit to the facility (see June 24-25, 2005). [Salon, 5/9/2008] He will say in May 2008: “Our message to them as analysts was, ‘Look, you got to get the importance of this war out to the American people.’ The important message is, this is a forward strategy, it is better to fight the war in Iraq than it is a war on American soil.” [PBS, 5/1/2008]

Gordon Cucullu. [Source: The Intelligence Summit]“Independent military analyst” Gordon Cucullu, a former Green Beret, is an enthusiastic participant in the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). Cucullu has just returned from a half-day tour of the Guantanamo detention facility (see June 24-25, 2005), and is prepared to give the Pentagon’s approved message to the media. Talking Points Covered in Fox Appearance - In an e-mail to Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence, he alerts the department to a new article he has written for conservative Website FrontPage, and notes that he has appeared on an early-morning broadcast on Fox News and delivered the appropriate talking points: “I did a Fox & Friends hit at 0620 this morning. Good emphasis on 1) no torture, 2) detainees abuse guards, and 3) continuing source of vital intel.” [Salon, 5/9/2008]Op-Ed: Pampered Detainees Regularly Abuse Guards - In the op-ed for FrontPage, entitled “What I Saw at Gitmo,” he writes that the US is being “extraordinarily lenient—far too lenient” on the detainees there. There is certainly abuse going on at Guantanamo, Cucullu writes—abuse of soldiers by the detainees. Based on his three-hour tour of the facility, which included viewing one “interrogation” and touring an unoccupied cellblock, Cucullu says that the detainees “fight their captors at every opportunity” and spew death threats against the soldiers, their families, and Americans in general. The soldiers are regularly splattered with “feces, urine, semen, and spit.” One detainee reportedly told another, “One day I will enjoy sucking American blood, although their blood is bitter, undrinkable.” US soldiers, whom Cucullu says uniformly treat the detainees with courtesy and restraint (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003), are constantly attacked by detainees who wield crudely made knives, or try to “gouge eyes and tear mouths [or] grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food.” In return, the detainees are given huge meals of “well-prepared food,” meals which typically overflow from two styrofoam containers. Many detainees insist on “special meal orders,” and throw fits if their meals are not made to order. The level of health care they are granted, Cucullu says, would suit even the most hypochondriac American. Cucullu writes that the detainees are lavished with ice cream treats, granted extended recreational periods, live in “plush environs,” and provided with a full array of religious paraphernalia. “They are not abused, hanged, tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated, or in any way treated the way that they once treated their own captives—or now treat their guards.” The commander, Brigadier General Jay Hood, tells Cucullu that such pampered treatment provides better results than harsher measures. “Establishing rapport” is more effective than coercion, Hood says, and, in Cucullu’s words, Hood “refers skeptics to the massive amount of usable intelligence information [the detainees] produce even three years into the program.” In conclusion, Cucullu writes, the reader is “right to worry about inhumane treatment” at Guantanamo, but on behalf of the soldiers, not the detainees. [FrontPage Magazine, 6/27/2005]

Portion of Pentagon e-mail discussing Meigs/Jacobs strategy session. [Source: Salon] (click image to enlarge)Two supposedly “independent” military analysts who are participating in the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda campaign (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) take part in Pentagon-hosted media strategy sessions to maximize the efficacy of the Pentagon’s propaganda onslaught regarding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility (see July 5, 2005). Retired General Montgomery Meigs and retired Colonel Jack Jacobs (who will be praised in 2008 by NBC’s Brian Williams for his independence—see April 29, 2008) take part in a session that is documented in an internal Pentagon e-mail. Suggestions in the Jacobs/Meigs session include providing information and photographs to all network presidents; not scheduling prime-time press conferences for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; only make Rumsfeld available to the press after priming reporters with information and photos, and ensuring that press questioning take place in places in which Rumsfeld is comfortable; and providing an “exclusive” report or analysis to the Washington Post. Both Meigs and Jacobs are routinely touted as “independent analysts” by MSNBC; both are shown to be quite reliable in providing Pentagon talking points by the Pentagon’s tracking system (see 2005 and Beyond). [Salon, 5/9/2008]

Lawrence O’Donnell. [Source: PBS]Progressive author and pundit Lawrence O’Donnell reveals that Time magazine e-mails will prove that White House political strategist Karl Rove was the source for reporter Matthew Cooper’s knowledge that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). O’Donnell reveals his knowledge during the taping of a segment of the syndicated political talk show The McLaughlin Group. The next day, O’Donnell will write, “I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury” investigating the Plame Wilson leak. “Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week.” The next day, Newsweek will print an article revealing Rove as Cooper’s source. [Huffington Post, 7/2/2005]

The Pentagon, tracking every bit of media coverage provided by the “independent military analysts” who are part of its Iraq propaganda program (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond), is particularly pleased with the results of its half-day tour of Guantanamo for selected analysts (see June 24-25, 2005). Its tracking (see 2005 and Beyond) finds that Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu (see June 27, 2005) receives the most coverage during the almost two weeks after the tour, followed by Major General Donald Shepperd (see June 24-27, 2005). In all, the analysts made 37 media appearances. They emphasized the following talking points: Prisoner/Guard Abuse - “Most abuse is either toward US military personnel and/or between prisoners.” “US military guards are regularly threatened by prisoners.” “Some analysts stated there may have been past abuses at Gitmo but not now.” 'Prisoner Interrogations' - “Interrogators are building relationships with prisoners, not torturing them.” “We are still gaining valuable information from prisoners.” Interrogations are very professionally run.” 'Quality of Prisoner Care' - “Prisoners are given excellent treatment, including provision of any and all religious paraphernalia.” “Special dietary requests are routinely granted.” 'Closing Gitmo' - “Gitmo exceeds Geneva Convention requirements.” “We should not close this facility and let dangerous terrorists out.” [Salon, 5/9/2008]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward gives an interview to NPR’s Terry Gross about the so-called “Plamegate” scandal. Woodward is dismissive of the entire imbroglio. “There was no nothing” to the story, he says. When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great.” Woodward does not divulge that he was perhaps the first reporter to have Valerie Plame Wilson’s name leaked to him (see June 13, 2003). Woodward’s dismissive attitude towards the affair is addressed by author and media critic Frank Rich, who writes in 2006: “The Wilsons were nobodies—not players, not part of the tight club to which Woodward and his blue-chip sources belonged. Yet, while Woodward was tone-deaf to the Watergate echoes in the Bush White House’s obsessive secrecy, in its detestation of the press, and in its flouting of the law, the parallels were striking to anyone outside the Beltway.” [American Prospect, 12/18/2005; Rich, 2006, pp. 181-182] In December, American Prospect reporter Todd Gitlin will write that Woodward “publicly and repeatedly sneered” at the Plame Wilson investigation. [American Prospect, 12/18/2005] Woodward says much the same things in private. In a conversation with his friend and former colleague Carl Bernstein around the same time as the NPR interview, he asks: “Why do you keep insisting this is important? I know something about this. There’s nothing there.” Woodward is deeply involved in writing his next book, Plan of Attack, and has little time or patience for what he considers a partisan non-scandal. Additionally, he and Bernstein are frequently together, conducting interviews for their recent book about their Watergate source, W. Mark Felt (see May 31, 2005), and often find themselves in conversations about confidential sources. Bernstein believes Woodward is ignoring something worth watching. “You don’t have this right,” he tells Woodward. “This thing is going to be huge. It will shine a light on the way Bush’s White House operates. It is going to expose the president and his campaign of disinformation.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2006]

Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff reveals that White House political strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper’s source in revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Isikoff learns that Rove was Cooper’s source from Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove has given Cooper permission to testify about their conversations surrounding Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, and anonymously confirms his identity as the source. There is no indication in Cooper’s notes or e-mails to suggest that Rove knew Plame Wilson was a covert operative. However, Isikoff notes, “it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published.” A “source close to Rove” says, “A fair reading of the [Cooper] e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false.” In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write that Luskin’s confirmation is “part of Karl’s and Luskin’s strategy.” Luskin continues to publicly insist that Rove never actually leaked Plame Wilson’s identity. [Newsweek, 7/10/2005; McClellan, 2008, pp. 261] He tells a Washington Post reporter that while Rove mentioned someone he identified as “Wilson’s wife,” he never actually identified her to Cooper by name. Rove also identified Plame Wilson, falsely, as the person who sent Wilson to Niger on behalf of the CIA (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/11/2005]

David Gregory. [Source: TopNews (.us)]In light of the revelation that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was a source for a reporter in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 10, 2005), the White House press corps grills press secretary Scott McClellan unmercifully on the entire issue. Plame Wilson will reveal a modicum of sympathy for the beleaguered McClellan, whom she will note “endured what had to be one of his hardest days on the job as reporters competed to ask the next question.” The reporters are eager to pry information out of McClellan and are exasperated at his refusal to answer questions in any depth. Fire Rove? - One of the most probing questions involves the White House’s promise to fire anyone involved in the leak (see September 29, 2003). Asked, “Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?” McClellan responds that the White House is not going to comment on an ongoing investigation, an answer the gathered reporters find less than satisfactory. “Excuse me,” the reporter continues, “but I wasn’t actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak. And I just want to know, is that still his position?” McClellan continues to deflect the question with the standard “refusal to comment on an ongoing investigation” line. He also refuses to answer the direct question, “Did Karl Rove commit a crime?” McClellan Cleared Rove, Others of Culpability - Another reporter, apparently NBC’s David Gregory, asks why McClellan told reporters that Rove, along with National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams and the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were definitely not involved in the leak. “[Y]ou said, ‘I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this’—do you stand by that statement?” McClellan confirms he said that “as part of helping the investigation move forward on the investigation we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.” The reporter calls McClellan’s response “ridiculous,” and says: “The notion that you’re going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?” When McClellan says he will go into further detail “at the appropriate time,” Gregory interjects, “Why are you choosing when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?” McClellan begins, “If you’ll let me finish—” and Gregory cuts him off, saying: “No, you’re not finishing—you’re not saying anything. You stand at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American public, he did, indeed, talk about [Wilson’s] wife, didn’t he?” McClellan continues to refuse to answer. Later in the conference, he is asked if “you will be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved would be let go?” McClellan says he “will be glad to talk about it at that point.” Ordered to Stop Talking? - Another reporter, following up on Gregory’s relentless questioning, asks: “When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?” McClellan answers vaguely, “Back in that time period.” The reporter then notes that “the president commented on it nine months later (see June 10, 2004). So was he not following the White House plan?” Again, McClellan refuses to answer. Another reporter tries a different tack, asking, “Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove?” McClellan answers that “those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigative side while it’s ongoing.” When Did Bush Know? - McClellan is asked bluntly, “When did the president learn that Karl Rove had—” to which McClellan interrupts with, “I’ve responded to that question.” Changing the Subject - McClellan then calls on Raghubar Goyal of the India Times, who he is sure will ask a foreign policy question having nothing to do with Rove or Plame Wilson. He manages to keep the subject more or less off of Rove for the remainder of the conference. Plame Wilson will recall, “I almost felt sorry for McClellan, who was perspiring and had that deer-in-the-headlights look to him.” [White House, 7/11/2005; Wilson, 2007, pp. 223-227]Change in Media Focus - After this press conference, as Plame Wilson will note, the press begins issuing far more skeptical reports on the leak and its investigation, depending less on White House spin about the Wilsons’ supposed culpability and zeroing in on the roles of Rove, Libby, and other White House officials. Plame Wilson will recall that for the first time, the pressure was easing off of them and being refocused onto the White House. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 227-228]McClellan: Press Conference 'Brutal,' 'Humiliating' - McClellan will later characterize the press conference as “brutal.” He calls NBC’s Gregory “mocking” when Gregory asks whether he still stands by his old assertions of no involvement by Rove (see September 29, 2003), Lewis Libby (see October 4, 2003), and Elliott Abrams (see October 5, 2003). ABC’s Terry Moran is incredulous that McClellan would try to hide behind a refusal to “comment on an ongoing investigation.” McClellan will later write, “Eventually, long after leaving the White House, I came to see that standing in front of the speeding press bus in those days had much more to do with protecting the president and the White House from further political embarrassment than respecting the sanctity of the investigation.” McClellan will reflect that it was during this press conference, as he felt his “reputation crumbling away, bit by bit,” that he began to lose his “affection for the job.” He will write: “The ridicule I received that day and the following ones, though dispiriting and humiliating, was justified, given what I had previously said. Since my hands were tied (see July 10, 2005), about all I could do was go into a defensive crouch.” After the conference, McClellan receives a brief verbal apology from Rove. McClellan will write, “It’s clear to me, Karl was only concerned about protecting himself from possible legal action and preventing his many critics from bringing him down.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 260-261]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward criticizes the investigation into the identity leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003); he has also withheld his knowledge of the case from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005). Woodward tells a CNN audience: “I’m not sure there’s any crime in all of this. The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail. People had pled guilty. In other words, there was a solid evidentiary trail. I don’t see it here.… Well, it may just be politics as usual. I mean, [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove’s defenders say, look, the evidence is, and the evidence is, that he was saying Joe Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband], who was criticizing the administration on weapons of mass destruction really had an ax to grind and got his job because his wife had worked at the CIA and recommended him, so there’s fuzziness to this.” [Media Matters, 11/16/2005]

Bloomberg News reports that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, testified that he first learned of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert. Libby will make this claim a staple of his defense in his upcoming perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007). He is referring to a conversation he had with Russert in July 2003 (see July 10 or 11, 2003). He testified to the claim when he was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Russert has told FBI investigators that he did not tell Libby of Plame Wilson’s identity (see November 24, 2003 and August 7, 2004). Similarly, White House political strategist Karl Rove has testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from columnist Robert Novak (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, and October 15, 2004). Novak has told investigators that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Rove, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Fitzgerald has determined that both Libby and Rove may have deliberately lied to the FBI and to his investigations in making their claims (see October and November 2003). According to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, Rove told Fitzgerald’s grand jury that “he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak.” Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says that the White House should suspend Libby and Rove’s security clearances (see July 13, 2005), and that President Bush should fire anyone involved in the leak, presumably meaning Libby and Rove. [Bloomberg, 7/22/2005; Washington Post, 7/23/2005]

An employee of the Lincoln Group, which has a contract with the Defense Department to do information operations within Iraq, submits an article with the headline “Terrorists Attack Sunni Volunteers” to the Al Mada newspaper in downtown Baghdad. According to the newspaper’s editors, he pays them $900 to run the piece. Lincoln Group records obtained by the Los Angeles Times also show the transaction, though it is recorded that the payment was $1,200. [Los Angeles Times, 11/30/2005]

Members of the special counsel’s investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak learn that former White House official Lewis Libby and/or his attorney, Joseph Tate, may have tried to influence or discourage New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s testimony. Miller received information from Libby about Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his staff learn from press accounts of possible witness tampering by either Libby, Tate, or both. It is known that Tate has discouraged Libby from giving Miller a waiver of confidentiality that would free her from her responsibility of protecting Libby as a source. Miller is currently in jail for refusing to testify in the investigation (see July 6, 2005). Upon learning about the potential tampering, Fitzgerald strongly urges attorneys for Miller and Libby to negotiate an agreement that would allow Miller to testify. (Libby will give Miller a waiver releasing her from their confidentiality agreement—see September 15, 2005). According to investigative reporter Murray Waas, because Fitzgerald is loathe to lose Miller’s testimony, and is unsure of what she might testify to, he will not aggressively pursue the possibility that Libby and/or Tate might have attempted to influence or discourage Miller’s testimony (see August 12, 2004 and After). However, the possibility of witness tampering does give further impetus to Fitzgerald’s inclination to bring criminal charges against Libby. Waas will write, “Potentially misleading and incomplete answers by Libby to federal investigators are less likely to be explained away as the result of his faulty memory or inadvertent mistakes,” according to his sources. A Justice Department official will tell Waas: “Both intent and frame of mind are often essential to bringing the type of charges Fitzgerald is apparently considering. And not wanting a key witness to testify goes straight to showing that there were indeed bad intentions.” [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

Someone pays nearly $1,500 to the Iraqi independent Addustour newspaper to run a news report titled “More Money Goes to Iraq’s Development.” The newspaper’s editor, Bassem Sheikh, later tells the Los Angeles Times that he has “no idea” who wrote it or where it came from. Addustour publishes the piece with the note “media services” above the text of the article to distinguish it from other editorial content. [Los Angeles Times, 11/30/2005]

William Cowan. [Source: The Intelligence Summit]Fourteen Marines die in Iraq. Hours after their deaths, William Cowan, a retired Marine colonel and Fox News analyst (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) who has grown increasingly uncomfortable with what he will later call the Pentagon’s “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts in briefings, telephones the Pentagon to advise officials that his upcoming comments on Fox “may not all be friendly.” He is then given a private briefing, quickly arranged by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s senior aides. But Cowan then tells Fox host Bill O’Reilly that it has been “a bad week” in Iraq, that many military officials he has talked to were “expressing a lot of dismay and disappointment at the way things are going,” and the US is “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq. The repercussions are almost immediate. According to Cowan, he is “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The Pentagon “simply didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t carrying their water.” Cowan later recalls: “Suddenly, boom, I never got another telephone call, I never got another e-mail from them.… I was just booted off the group. I was fired.” Cowan will say that he and other analysts were given special access only “as long as they thought I was serving their purposes.… I drink nobody’s Kool-Aid.” The next day, the other analysts take part in a conference call with General James Conway, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he urges them not to let the Marines’ deaths erode support for the war. Conway is blunt, saying directly that the US citizenry is the main target of Pentagon propaganda. “The strategic target remains our population,” he tells them. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.” An analyst chimes in, “General, I just made that point on the air.” Conway says, “Let’s work it together, guys.” [New York Times, 4/20/2008; Washington Post, 4/21/2008]

James Carville and Robert Novak, moments before Novak leaves the CNN set. [Source: CNN / Comedy Central]Conservative columnist Robert Novak storms off the set of CNN’s Strategy Session, apparently unwilling to discuss his outing of CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Novak, discussing an unrelated matter with Democratic strategist James Carville, says, “Just let me finish what I’m going to say, James, please. I know you hate to hear me.” Carville says to host Ed Henry: “He’s gotta show these right-wingers that he’s got backbone, you know. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show ‘em you’re tough.” Novak stands up, saying, “Well, I think that’s bullsh_t, and I hate that.” He says to Henry, “Just let it go.” Novak then walks off the set. Later in the broadcast, Henry apologizes to viewers, saying: “I had told him in advance that we were going to ask him about the CIA leak case. He was not here for me to be able to ask him about that. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ask him about that in the future.” [Media Matters, 8/4/2005]

Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, runs a news article titled “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism” prominently on the newspaper’s second page. According to Luay Baldawi, the paper’s chief editor, the paper receives no money to run the story. However, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Al Mutamar was paid $50. [Los Angeles Times, 11/30/2005]

The Justice Department refuses to prosecute a White House event staffer who impersonated a Secret Service agent while improperly ejecting three people from a town-hall event featuring President Bush. The staffer will later be identified as Michael Casper (see March 21, 2005). The Secret Service recommended that Casper be prosecuted for impersonating a federal officer. The White House has refused to identify Casper, merely calling him a “White House volunteer.” US Attorney William Leone says: “Criminal law is not an appropriate tool to resolve this dispute. The normal give and take of the political system is the appropriate venue for a resolution.” Eight of Colorado’s nine US representatives have condemned the ejection. Marilyn Musgrove (R-CO), a longtime Bush ally, says, “I really do believe in free speech, and if you try to quell people it just makes them more determined.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/23/2005; OMB Watch, 8/8/2005]

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck, in a joint attack on the Hurricane Katrina survivors and the families of the 9/11 victims, calls Katrina survivors “scumbags” and says how much he “hates” the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Beck, whose daily radio show is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks (a subsidiary of Clear Channel, which also syndicates many other conservative talk show hosts) and is broadcast to a weekly audiience of some 3 million listeners, acknowledges that no one “in their right mind is going to say this out loud.” He then savages both groups of victims and survivors. Beck says: “Let me be real honest with you. I don’t think anybody on talk radio—I don’t think anybody in their right mind is going to say this out loud—but I wonder if I’m the only one that feels this way. Yesterday, when I saw the ATM cards being handed out, the $2,000 ATM cards, and they were being handed out at the Astrodome. And they actually had to close the Astrodome and seal it off for a while because there was a near-riot trying to get to these ATM cards. My first thought was, it’s not like they’re going to run out of the $2,000 ATM cards. You can wait! You know, stand in line.… When you are rioting for these tickets, or these ATM cards, the second thing that came to mind was—and this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I’m alone in this—you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families? Took me about a year. And I had such compassion for them, and I really wanted to help them, and I was behind, you know, ‘Let’s give them money, let’s get this started.’ All of this stuff. And I really didn’t—of the 3,000 victims’ families, I don’t hate all of them. Probably about 10 of them. And when I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh shut up!’ I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining. And we did our best for them. And, again, it’s only about 10. But the second thought I had when I saw these people and they had to shut down the Astrodome and lock it down, I thought: I didn’t think I could hate victims faster than the 9/11 victims. These guys—you know it’s really sad. We’re not hearing anything about Mississippi. We’re not hearing anything about Alabama. We’re hearing about the victims in New Orleans. This is a 90,000-square-mile disaster site, New Orleans is 181 square miles. A hundred and—0.2 percent of the disaster area is New Orleans! And that’s all we’re hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we’re seeing on television are the scumbags—and again, it’s not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It’s just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they’re getting all the attention. It’s exactly like the 9/11 victims’ families. There’s about 10 of them that are spoiling it for everybody.” [Media Matters, 9/9/2005]

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says: “I think we’re in the end game now.… I think we’re in a six-month window here where it’s going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that’s my own feeling—let alone the presidential one.” Friedman will continue predicting a resolution of the Iraq situation in “the next six months” until at least May 2006 (see May 6-11, 2006). [MSNBC, 9/25/2005; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

William Bennett. [Source: Ashbrook Center, Ashland University]William Bennett, the conservative radio host, Fox News contributor, and former secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, tells his listeners that one way to drop the US crime rate would be to “abort every black baby in this country.” Bennett, who reaches a weekly audience of some 1.25 million, is apparently going off a claim in the economic treatise Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, who argued that legalized abortion has lowered crime rates, since many aborted fetuses, growing up in poor homes and in single-parent or teenaged-parent homes, would have been more likely to commit crimes. Levitt and Dubner made no race-based claims. A caller to Bennett’s show says the national media “talk[s] a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I’ve read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade (see January 22, 1973), the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn’t—never touches this at all.” After some back-and-forth about assumptions over how many of those aborted fetuses would have grown up to be productive citizens, speculations about costs, and Bennett’s citation of the Freakonomics claim, he says: “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.” [Media Matters, 9/28/2005; CNN, 9/30/2005] Bennett will face heavy criticism for his remarks (see September 29-30, 2005), but in his turn will claim that he is the one owed the apology (see September 30 - October 1, 2005).

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says: “Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time.” Friedman will continue predicting a resolution of the Iraq situation in “the next six months” until at least May 2006 (see May 6-11, 2006). [New York Times, 9/28/2005]

Conservative radio host and former Secretary of Education William Bennett is castigated by both liberals and conservatives for his statement that aborting all black children would lower the US crime rate (see September 28-October 1, 2005). President Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, tells reporters that Bush “believes the comments were not appropriate,” though he does not actually condemn Bennett’s words, as requested by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Pelosi says: “What could possibly have possessed Secretary Bennett to say those words, especially at this time? What could he possibly have been thinking? This is what is so alarming about his words.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says he is “appalled” by Bennett’s remarks. “The Republican Party has recently taken great pains to reach out to the African-American community, and I hope that they will be swift in condemning Mr. Bennett’s comments as nothing short of callous and ignorant,” he adds. Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL), an African-American, says, “This is precisely the kind of insensitive, hurtful, and ignorant rhetoric that Americans have grown tired of.” Rush asks “my friends, the responsible Republicans” to pass a House resolution condemning Bennett’s remarks as “outrageous racism of the most bigoted and ignorant kind.” He asks: “Where is the indignation from the GOP, as one of their prominent members talk about aborting an entire race of Americans as a way of ridding this country of crime? How ridiculous! How asinine! How insane can one be?” Instead, Rush calls for the “aborting” of Republican policies, “which have hurt the disadvantaged, the poor average Americans for the benefit of large corporations.” Bruce Gordon, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), says Bennett and his employer, the Salem Radio Network, owe the nation an apology. “In 2005, there is no place for the kind of racist statement made by Bennett,” he says in a statement. “While the entire nation is trying to help survivors, black and white, to recover from the damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is unconscionable for Bennett to make such ignorant and insensitive comments.” [CNN, 9/30/2005]Ignorance, Stereotyping Blacks as Born Criminals - In a press release, Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), says: “Are these the values of the Republican Party and its conservative allies? If not, President Bush, Ken Mehlman [Dean’s Republican counterpart], and the Republican Leadership should denounce them immediately as hateful, divisive, and worthy only of scorn. This kind of statement is hardly compassionate conservatism; rather, Bennett’s comments demonstrate a reprehensible racial insensitivity and ignorance. Bill Bennett’s hateful, inflammatory remarks regarding African Americans are simply inexcusable. They are particularly unacceptable from a leader in the conservative movement and former secretary of education, once charged with the well-being of every American school child. He should apologize immediately. As Americans, we should focus on the virtues that bring us together, not hatred that tears us apart and unjustly scapegoats fellow Americans.” [Democratic National Committee, 9/29/2005] Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), says: “I’m not even going to comment on something that disgusting. Really, I’m thinking of my black grandchild and I’m going to hold [off].” [ABC News, 9/29/2005] The Reverend Jesse Jackson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and former associate of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, says: “Republicans, Democrats, and all Americans of goodwill should denounce this statement, should distance themselves from Mr. Bennett. And the private sector should not support Mr. Bennett’s radio show or his comments on the air.” [Guardian, 10/1/2005]Civil Rights Leader: Bennett's Show Should be Canceled - Wade Henderson, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, says an apology is insufficient; Bennett’s radio program should be canceled. Referring to inaccurate news reports that blacks were responsible for a “crime wave” in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Henderson says, “I think African-Americans are certainly tired of being stereotyped as being responsible for the majority of crime in American society when the facts simply don’t bear that assumption out.” [CBS News, 9/30/2005]

The Washington Post publishes an article, written by Susan Schmidt and Jim VanderHei, that reveals details of White House official Lewis Libby’s conversations with New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Miller has just been released from jail (see September 29, 2005) after receiving a confidentiality waiver from Libby (see September 15, 2005). The details of the Libby-Miller conversations come from a source the reporters call “familiar with Libby’s account of his conversations with Miller in July 2003.” According to the source, Libby told Miller he heard that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, “had something to do with sending him” to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), “but he did not know who she was or where she worked, the source said.” The reporters then write that during his second conversation with Miller, Libby said he had learned that Plame Wilson “had a role in sending him on the trip and that she worked for the CIA. Libby never knew Plame’s name or that she was a covert operative, the source said.” The source also told the reporters that Libby never spoke with columnist Robert Novak about Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). [Washington Post, 9/30/2009] The source “familiar with Libby’s” testimony was repeating the same falsehoods that Libby told the Plame Wilson grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Miller will testify that in their first conversation, Libby told her that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA’s Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office (see September 30, 2005, October 7, 2005, and October 12, 2005). [National Journal, 10/18/2005] Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler will later write that she believes Libby used the Post story to attempt to “coach” Miller’s testimony. Both Wheeler and reporter Murray Waas will note that the same anonymous source quoted in the Schmidt/VandeHei story attempted, and failed, to get articles based on the same information published in two other newspapers. Waas will write: “Journalists at two news organizations declined to publish stories. Among their concerns was that they had only a single source for the story and that that source had such a strong bias on behalf of Libby that the account of his grand jury testimony might possibly be incomplete or misleading in some way. But more important were concerns that a leak of an account of Libby’s grand jury testimony, on the eve of Miller’s own testimony, might be an effort—using the media—to let Miller know what Libby had said, if she wanted to give testimony beneficial to him, or similar to his. (There is no evidence that Miller did not testify truthfully to the grand jury.)” Wheeler accuses Schmidt of being Libby’s “stenographer,” a reporter all too willing to publish whatever a person wishes without investigating the possible motives behind the provision of the information. Wheeler also believes Libby may have attempted to coach or influence Miller’s testimony in his letter releasing the reporter from their confidentiality agreement (see September 15, 2005). [National Journal, 10/18/2005; Marcy Wheeler, 11/3/2005] The Schmidt/VandeHei article is dated September 30, but appears on the Post’s Web site on September 29, well before Miller’s testimony. [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

Columnist Bob Herbert accuses Bennett of ‘racial effrontery.’ [Source: Louisville Courier-Journal]William Bennett, the conservative radio host who is facing heavy criticism for suggesting that aborting black children would lower the US crime rate (see September 28-October 1, 2005 and September 29-30, 2005), defends his position by saying: “I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it’s morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means.… I’m not racist, and I’ll put my record up against theirs,” he says, referring to leading Democrat Nancy Pelosi and other critics. “I’ve been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times—equal educational opportunities for kids. We’ve got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses,” Bennett says. “I don’t think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry. But that’s not what I advocate.” Bennett says he owes no one an apology: “I don’t think I do. I think people who misrepresented my view owe me an apology.” [CNN, 9/30/2005]Says Topics of Race and Crime Cannot Be off-Limits - Later, he continues to defend his remarks, saying, “It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies.” Asked why he would bring the subject up at all, Bennett says: “There was a lot of discussion about race and crime in New Orleans. There was discussion—a lot of it wrong—but nevertheless, media jumping on stories about looting and shooting, and roving gangs and so on. There’s no question this is on our minds.… What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking… we don’t hesitate to talk about things that are touchy. I’m sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can’t say this is an area of American life [and] public policy that we’re not allowed to talk about—race and crime.” [ABC News, 9/29/2005; Guardian, 10/1/2005]Feeding Perception that Republicans are Racist - Robert George, a black conservative editorial writer for the New York Post, agrees that Bennett did not mean his remarks as racist. But, he says, he worries that Bennett is feeding the perception that Republicans are racist. “His overall point about not making broad sociological claims and so forth, that was a legitimate point,” George says. “But it seems to me someone with Bennett’s intelligence… should know better the impact of his words and sort of thinking these things through before he speaks.” [ABC News, 9/29/2005] Bob Herbert, a black progressive columnist for the New York Times, later says he was unsurprised by Bennett’s remarks: “I’ve come to expect racial effrontery from big shots in the Republican Party. The GOP has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies, and outright anti-black policies. That someone who’s been a stalwart of that outfit might muse publicly about the potential benefits of exterminating blacks is not surprising to me at all.… Bill Bennett’s musings about the extermination of blacks in America (it would be ‘impossible, ridiculous, morally reprehensible’) is all of a piece with a Republican Party philosophy that is endlessly insulting to black people and overwhelmingly hostile to their interests.” [New York Times, 10/6/2005]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh encourages an African-American caller who describes liberalism as “a form of mental illness” that is “actually a type of rebellion against God and virtue through the justification of… immorality, things like abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, prostitution, racism, even race-centered thinking.” Limbaugh restates the caller’s comment, saying: “So liberalism is a mental illness. It’s borne of people that do not like any judgmentalism against their depravity.” The caller, identified only as “Eric from Charlotte, North Carolina,” then describes black civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, black radio hosts Tavis Smiley and Tom Joyner, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY), and “all of the Democratic delegation up there in Congress… the Ted Kennedys (D-MA),” and “anybody who’s in the leadership position in the Democratic Party” as “pimps” who attempt to deceive black people into remaining on the “Democratic plantation,” and says Democrats suffer from “the slave, slave master, slave-liberator mentality.” Democratic leaders are “all mentally ill,” he continues, and tells Limbaugh: “The Bible actually calls them ‘fools’ because they’re rebelling against virtue and God. Now, I’m not calling them fools, I’m just saying the Bible calls them fools.” Limbaugh encourages the caller, saying, “If the Bible can call them fools, you can echo the Bible,” to which the caller replies, “I’m calling them fools through the Bible.” Republicans and “those on the religious right… are the preachers and the liberators trying to tell the truth about what the Democratic leadership—the Democrats are doing to black people.” Limbaugh rewards the caller with a free year’s subscription to his Web site. [Media Matters, 10/4/2005]

Dan Senor. [Source: ThinkProgress.org]Fox News analyst Dan Senor, the former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq [White House, 10/1/2006; Salon, 5/10/2008] , writes an article for the neoconservative magazine Weekly Standard about the upcoming trial of captured Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. Senor writes that the trial will provide “a peek into the depths of human evil and, embarrassingly, if incidentally, into the concurrent indifference of Western nations to Iraqi suffering. Thus far, the accountability of Nuremberg, the Hague, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone has eluded Arab-Muslim leaders. This is about to change.” Senor also says that part of Hussein’s trial strategy will be to attempt to create sympathy for his “humiliation” that will translate into “a spike in the insurgency…” He notes that “an increase in violence is anticipated by Commanding General George Casey too.” [Weekly Standard, 10/2/2005] According to Pentagon documents released as part of the New York Times investigation into the Pentagon propaganda operation surrounding Iraq (see May 9, 2008), Senor routinely asks the advice of Pentagon public relations official Larry Di Rita about what he should say on his television broadcasts, and submits articles such as this to Di Rita for editing directions. [Salon, 5/10/2008]

In an op-ed, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen pleads with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to terminate his investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak. “The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago, and prosecute some real criminals,” Cohen writes. Fitzgerald, Cohen asserts, has accomplished nothing besides jailing New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005) and “repeatedly haul[ing] this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn’t one in the first place but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup—but, again, of nothing much.” Cohen advises Fitzgerald to “[g]o home, Pat.” He says that for administration officials, the investigation is “[n]ot nice,” but is an example of Washington business as usual. “This is rarely considered a crime,” Cohen writes. Perhaps the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, a clandestine CIA agent, “might technically be one,” but Cohen writes that “it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.” Cohen writes that Fitzgerald may be considering indicting White House officials, not for outing Plame Wilson, but for related crimes, perhaps disclosing secrets or on some sort of conspiracy charges. “Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some lefty critics hiss, she’s a double-dealing grandstander, in the manner of some of her accusers.” Cohen says that the larger issue is “control of information,” and explains: “If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration—any administration—is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up. This—this creepy silence—will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame, and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes moi.” Intimidating reporters would have more far-reaching effects than bringing what Cohen calls “trivial charges” to court. “Please, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Cohen concludes, “there’s so much crime in Washington already. Don’t commit another.” [Washington Post, 10/13/2005]

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg. [Source: Paid Content (.org)]Jacob Weisberg, a senior editor of Slate magazine, warns liberals that the possible prosecution of White House official Karl Rove and/or former White House aide Lewis Libby may not be cause for celebration. “Opponents of the Bush administration are anticipating vindication on various fronts—justice for their nemesis Karl Rove, repudiation of George W. Bush’s dishonest case for the Iraq war, a comeuppance for Chalabi-loving reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times, and even some payback for the excesses of independent counsels during the Clinton years,” he writes. Weisberg calls support for the potential prosecutions “self-destructive,” and explains: “Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they’ll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press’s right to find out, the government’s ability to disclose, and the public’s right to know.” Weisberg calls the law that is at the heart of the Plame Wilson investigation, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), “flawed,” and the entire Fitzgerald investigation “misbegotten.” The law is difficult to use for a conviction because it requires that prosecutors prove intent to do harm. “Under the First Amendment, we have a right to debate what is done in our name, even by secret agents,” Weisberg writes. “It may be impossible to criminalize malicious disclosure without hampering essential public debate.” After calling the White House “negligent” and “stupid” for revealing Plame Wilson’s CIA status, he says that no one has shown Rove, Libby, or any other official leaked her name with the intent of causing her or her career harm. Weisberg writes: “[A]fter two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame… knew she was undercover. And as nasty as they might be, it’s not really thinkable that they would have known. You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn’t like in the New York Times” (see July 6, 2003). The outing of Plame Wilson was “accidental,” Weisberg claims, part of the Bush administration’s attempts to defend itself against its failure to find WMD in Iraq. Weisberg calls Fitzgerald “relentless and ambitious,” implying that he is pursuing the case for the fulfillment of his personal ambition, and says that no evidence exists of anyone breaking any laws, whether it be the IIPA, statutes against perjury or conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or anything else. Fitzgerald will indict someone for something, Weisberg states, because not to do so would seem like he failed in his investigation. Fitzgerald is sure to bring what Weisberg calls “creative crap charges of his own devising” against someone, be it a White House official or a reporter. Weisberg concludes by calling Fitzgerald’s investigation “a disaster for freedom of the press and freedom of information.” [Slate, 10/18/2005]

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak is running the risk of moving too far, too fast, and may end up jailing Bush administration officials without good cause. Kristof cites two Republican-driven investigations from the 1990s—the “fanatical” Kenneth Starr investigation of former President Clinton and the “appalling” 10-year pursuit of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros—to warn that the Fitzgerald investigation, like those he cites from the 1990s, may be moving into murkier areas than originally warranted, i.e. the investigation into who leaked the name of a clandestine CIA agent. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may be “considering mushier kinds of indictments,” Kristof writes, “for perjury, obstruction of justice, or revealing classified information. Sure, flat-out perjury must be punished. But if the evidence is more equivocal, then indictments would mark just the kind of overzealous breach of prosecutorial discretion that was a disgrace when Democrats were targeted. And it would be just as disgraceful if Republicans are the targets.” Kristof acknowledges that White House officials “behaved abominably in this affair,” and says, “the idea of a government official secretly using the news media… to attack former Ambassador Joseph Wilson [is] sleazy and outrageous. But a crime? I’m skeptical, even though there seems to have been a coordinated White House campaign against Mr. Wilson” (see October 1, 2003). “My guess is that the participants in a White House senior staff meeting discussed Mr. Wilson’s trip and the charges that the administration had knowingly broadcast false information about uranium in Niger—and then decided to take the offensive. The leak of Mrs. Wilson’s identity resulted from that offensive, but it may well have been negligence rather than vengeance.” Kristof doubts that anyone in the White House knew that Plame Wilson was an undercover agent, and believes that “some official spread the word of Mrs. Wilson’s work at the CIA to make her husband’s trip look like a nepotistic junket.” He calls such behavior “appalling,” and says that columnist Robert Novak “was absolutely wrong to print the disclosure” (see July 14, 2003). “But there’s also no need to exaggerate it,” he concludes. The entire Plame Wilson affair is an example of “backstabbing politics,” he writes, “but not… obvious criminality.” Therefore, Fitzgerald should be wary of handing down indictments, both in the interest of legal restraint and for fear that indicting “White House officials on vague charges of revealing classified information… will have a chilling effect on the reporting of national security issues.” [New York Times, 10/25/2005]

Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward slams ‘Plamegate’ special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, he calls Fitzgerald’s investigation “disgraceful.” When asked if he knew who might have leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press, Woodward claims—falsely—that he has no idea. “I wish I did have a bombshell,” he says. “I don’t even have a firecracker.” The leak, he says, is merely “gossip and chatter” of interest only to “a junkyard-dog prosecutor” like Fitzgerald who “goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks and rocks under rocks and so forth.” Woodward also claims that the CIA’s assessment of the damage likely to have been done by the leak is “minimal.” Woodward says: “They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn’t have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment. So people have kind of compared—somebody was saying this was [similar to the cases of convicted spies] Aldrich Ames or Bob Hanssen, big spies. This didn’t cause damage.” Woodward is ignoring reports that the damage caused by the leak may well have been severe and widespread (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006); he also fails to note an upcoming report by his own newspaper that notes the CIA has not yet completed its assessment of the damage, but speculates as to just how severe the damage is believed to be (see October 29, 2005). [CNN, 10/27/2005; Media Matters, 10/31/2005; Media Matters, 11/16/2005; Time, 11/20/2005] Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003). He has also withheld his knowledge of the case from Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005).

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is dismissive of the indictment of White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), saying, “I don’t know how this is about the buildup to the war, the Valerie Plame Wilson issue.” He dismisses the entire Plame Wilson investigation as mere White House gossiping. Woodward has his own peripheral involvement in Plame Wilson’s outing, which he keeps secret for years (see June 13, 2003) and November 16-17, 2005); according to author Frank Rich, that makes him a prime example of journalistic hypocrisy. Rich will add that it is hard to fathom how any journalist could come to such a conclusion. Rich will write: “If one assumes, as Woodward apparently did, against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the White House acted in good faith purveying its claims of imminent doomsday and pre-9/11 Qaeda-Saddam collaboration, then there’s no White House wrongdoing that needs covering up. So why would anyone in the administration try to do something nasty to silence a whistle-blower like Joseph Wilson? Where’s the story?” [Rich, 2006, pp. 191]

Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley writes in the online magazine Slate that he finds the entire Niger-Plame-Libby issue “confusing” and incoherent. After mocking a variety of aspects of the case (“Niger, which is not Nigeria,” the “Pynchonesque… mysterious beauty” of the surname “Plame,” the forgettable blandness of the name Joe Wilson, and the nickname “Scooter,” or perhaps “Snooker” or “Snotty,” of accused leaker Lewis Libby), and portraying the entire issue as the plot of a forgettable film noir or perhaps a Shakespeare knockoff, he calls the “whole prosecution nuts.” [Slate, 10/28/2005]

Hours after the Patrick Fitzgerald press conference announcing the indictment of Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell tells a viewing audience on MSNBC’s Hardball that the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA official whose exposure as a covert agent triggered the investigation that led to Libby’s indictment, did no real damage to US intelligence interests. Mitchell does not cite any sources in her claim. She says: “I think the prosecutor [Fitzgerald] made a very broad claim, whether you buy it or not, that the disclosure of any CIA officer’s identity is a threat to our national security, that we are at a stage in our country where we need to recruit people, we need to guarantee that they will have anonymity, and that you cannot recruit people to work in these difficult jobs, nor can you be sure that by disclosing their identity that you are not putting them in jeopardy. I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.” It is possible that Mitchell sources her claim from a very similar claim made the night before by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (see October 27, 2005). [Jane Hamsher, 11/29/2005] Two years before, Mitchell told a CNBC audience that “everybody knew” Plame Wilson was a covert official, a claim she was later forced to retract (see October 3, 2003). Shortly after Mitchell’s Hardball claim, MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson writes, “In fact, as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has reported, an internal CIA investigation found that Plame’s outing caused no discernable damage to anyone.” [MSNBC, 11/18/2005] A 2003 CIA assessment (see Before September 16, 2003) and an October 2005 analysis by the Washington Post (see October 29, 2005) both determined that Plame Wilson’s exposure caused “severe damage” to the US intelligence community, particularly in the Middle East.

In an op-ed, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial staff accuses special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of “criminalizing politics” in his investigation of the Plame Wilson leak. Fitzgerald’s investigation, the editorial reads, has taken two years, cost millions of dollars, jailed a reporter (see July 6, 2005), “and preoccupied some of the White House’s senior officials.” The investigation has culminated in the indictment of former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), not for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press, but for what the Journal calls “contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used.” The Journal writes that there is no evidence, at least to the public’s knowledge, that Libby lied to anyone, be it the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), or anyone else. Nowhere has anyone alleged a motive for Libby’s alleged perjury, the Journal states (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). And, the Journal notes, Libby was not a source for the column that actually outed Plame Wilson as a CIA official. The Journal questions the existence of any White House “conspiracy to silence administration critics,” and if there was, it writes, “it was more daft than deft.” Instead, the Journal writes, the Libby indictment “amounts to an allegation that one official lied about what he knew about an underlying ‘crime’ that wasn’t committed.” Fitzgerald is merely involving himself in what the Journal calls “a policy dispute between an elected administration and critics of the president’s approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/29/2005]

The Washington Post prints an article by reporter Barton Gellman about the intelligence leaks from the White House that led to the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. The article examines the question of whether Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, obstructed the FBI investigation into Plame Wilson’s exposure in order to protect Cheney. [Washington Post, 10/30/2005] According to journalist and blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, the Post deleted a key portion of Gellman’s story shortly after it appeared on the Post’s Web site (the edited version is what makes it into print). The deleted portion noted that on July 12, 2003, Cheney told Libby “to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson’s credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source” (see July 12, 2003 and 3:20 a.m. July 12, 2003). [Joshua Micah Marshall, 10/30/2005] A criminal lawyer who blogs under the moniker “Anonymous Liberal” speculates that the Post may have removed the reference to Fleischer because Fleischer was a source for Post reporter Walter Pincus. Pincus is identified in Gellman’s article as receiving information from an unidentified White House source who, like Libby, attacked Wilson and implied that he was sent to Niger by his wife (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). [Anonymous Liberal, 10/30/2005]

In the days after Michael Steele (R-MD), an African-American, announced his candidacy for governor of Maryland, allegations have resurfaced that in 2002 he was “pelted” with Oreo cookies by Democrats at a political debate (see September 26, 2002 and After); if true, such actions would constitute a significant racial slur. However, reporting of the incident has fallen into question, and Steele himself recently denied being hit by cookies during the debate, though he did say he saw Oreos on the stage near him: “I’ve never claimed that I was hit, no. The one or two that I saw at my feet were there. I just happened to look down and see them.” Eyewitness accounts compiled by the Baltimore Sun show that the allegations are questionable at best; moreover, the Sun reports, accounts of the incident by Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich, Ehrlich’s communications director Paul Schurick, and Steele himself, dramatically contradict each other. Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters compares the different accounts of the incident, and concludes that the story has grown from an almost-baseless “partisan talking point” into “a ‘fact’ reported by the media” over the last three years. Media Matters notes that several newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Times, have recently reported the incident as factual, with the Times writing that Steele was “pelt[ed] with Oreo cookies” among the “racially tinged attacks” directed at him by his Democratic opponent in 2002. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell writes: “Steele has been subjected to the worst racial slurs imaginable. At one debate, a group of black people pelted the stage with Oreos.” Between October 31 and November 16, the Washington Times asserts the incident as fact three times in its editorial pages, and twice in its news reporting. The Weekly Standard reports it three times. Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity twice asserts it as fact on his broadcast, as does one of his guests, National Review editor Rich Lowry. Deroy Murdock, another National Review contributor, asserts it as fact in one of his columns. Washington Post metro editor Marc Fisher cites it in an online chat. Mitchell cites it in the Chicago Sun-Times. The conservative American Spectator cites it as fact once. Syndicated columnist Gregory Kane cites it as fact once. The National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service editor in chief George Curry states it as fact on National Public Radio, as does the host of the NPR program, Ed Gordon. The Investors Business Daily cites it as fact in an editorial. MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson cites it as fact on the air. The Associated Press cites it as fact in an article. Media Matters also notes that the story resurfaced briefly during the August 2004 Republican National Convention, with the Baltimore Sun reporting that Steele and Ehrlich “still talk” about the incident, and the Washington Post reporting it as fact. [WTOP Radio 103.5 (Washington), 11/15/2005; Media Matters, 11/21/2005]

Joseph Galloway. [Source: National Public Radio]Veteran war correspondent Joseph Galloway, a stern critic of the Iraq policies of the administration and the Pentagon, journeys to the Pentagon for what he believes to be a one-on-one lunch with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The reporter is surprised to find that Rumsfeld has invited four colleagues along to assist him with Galloway: Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Richard Cody, the vice chief of staff of the Army; the director of the Joint Staff, Walter Sharp; and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Larry Di Rita. The highlights of the lunch discussion, which is marked by a series of digressions and tangential conversations, are as follows: Rumsfeld tells Galloway, “I’m not hearing anything like the things you are writing about.” Galloway responds that he often found that people in positions of such power and influence rarely receive the unvarnished truth. Rumsfeld retorts: “Oh, I know that but I talk to lots of soldiers all the time. Why, I have given over 600 town hall meetings and anyone can ask me anything.” Rumsfeld then shifts gears to visit one of Galloway’s favorite topics: the question of whether the US Army is broken. Far from being in poor shape, Rumsfeld asserts, the Army is “light years better than it was four years ago.” Galloway counters that Rumsfeld’s strategies are nonsensical if they result in Army and Marine soldiers being sent in endless forays down the same highways to die by roadside bombs. The US is playing to the insurgency’s strong suit, Galloway argues. Rumsfeld agrees, and says he has instructed the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, to shift the focus from patrolling to “standing up” the Iraqi defense forces. He has told Iraq’s leaders that the US is losing the stomach for the ever-growing casualty count, “and they understand that and agree with it.” Galloway parries Rumsfeld’s talk with a question about the Army sending bill collectors after wounded soldiers who lost limbs in a bombing, or were “overpaid” for combat duty and benefits. Rumsfeld blames the Pentagon’s computer system, and says the problem is being addressed. Rumsfeld agrees with one of Galloway’s columns that lambasted the Pentagon for doing enemy body counts. “We are NOT going to do body counts,” Rumsfeld asserts. Galloway retorts that the Pentagon is indeed doing body counts and releasing them, and has been doing so for a year. If you don’t want to do body counts, Galloway says, then stop doing them. Throughout the conversation, Rumsfeld jots down notes on what he considers to be valid points or criticisms. Galloway writes: “Others at the table winced. They had visions of a fresh shower of the secretary’s famous ‘snowflakes,’ memos demanding answers or action or both.” Before Galloway leaves, Rumsfeld shows him some memorabilia and tells him, “I want you to know that I love soldiers and I care about soldiers. All of us here do.” Galloway replies that concern for the troops and their welfare and safety are his only purpose, “and I intend to keep kicking your butt regularly to make sure you stay focused on that goal.” As Galloway writes, “He grinned and said: ‘That’s all right. I can take it.’” [Knight Ridder, 11/2/2005]

Victoria Toensing, a former deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, writes a guest editorial for the Wall Street Journal that demands the Plame Wilson investigation, as it stands, be closed. Instead, she says, the CIA should be investigated for causing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to become public knowledge. Toensing blames the CIA’s “bizarre conduct” for Plame Wilson’s exposure. The CIA is responsible for Plame Wilson’s exposure, Toensing states, by allowing her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger to look into claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Toensing writes that Plame Wilson “suggested” her husband for the trip (see February 13, 2002, February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). The CIA did not have Wilson write a report, but instead conducted an oral debriefing (see March 4-5, 2002, (March 6, 2002), and March 8, 2002) that, Toensing writes, was never sent to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office (see March 5, 2002). Wilson’s subsequent New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003) was not approved or vetted with the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board, something Toensing finds puzzling even though she notes that Wilson was not asked to sign a nondisclosure or confidentiality agreement. She also alleges, without giving specifics, that the statements in Wilson’s op-ed do not jibe with the information in the CIA’s report on his trip, though that report is classified and not available for her inspection. For the CIA to allow Wilson to write the op-ed was, Toensing says, tantamount to giving a green light for Plame Wilson’s exposure as a CIA official. Conservative colunnist Robert Novak, who publicly exposed Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), was told by “a still-unnamed administration source” (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003) that Wilson’s wife “suggested him for the assignment,” leading Novak to uncover Plame Wilson’s identity. Toensing also claims that Novak was never asked not to publish Plame Wilson’s name in anything but the most “perfunctory” fashion (see (July 11, 2003) and Before July 14, 2003). Toensing defends her allegation by writing: “Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.” Toensing goes on to note that the CIA permitted Plame Wilson to make political contributions under the name “Wilson, Valerie E.,” contributions recorded by the Federal Elections Commission. Toensing concludes, “The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft,” and demands that Congress conduct an investigation into the CIA’s conduct. [Wall Street Journal, 11/3/2005] The Journal does not inform its readers that Toensing was one of a group of lawyers and conservative activists who filed an amici curiae brief with the court asking that it overturn its decision to compel the testimony of two lawyers in the Plame Wilson investigation (see March 23, 2005).

Conservative Washington lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey publish a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal defending the Bush administration, and specifically the indicted Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), for their actions in the Plame Wilson identity leak. No crime was committed, Rivkin and Casey allege, and no legal ethics were breached. Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA official was moot because, Rivkin and Casey write, “she was not a covert agent—a readily ascertainable fact that should have concluded special counsel Fitzgerald’s investigation almost as soon as it got underway” (see Fall 1992 - 1996). In fact, Rivkin and Casey write, exposing Plame Wilson’s role in her husband Joseph Wilson’s 2002 mission to Africa (see February 19, 2002, February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005) “was relevant to an accurate understanding of his later allegations against the administration.” In general, the lawyers state, it is not a crime to expose an intelligence official’s “classified” status, only genuine covert agents. Since Plame Wilson was not a covert agent, by Rivkin and Casey’s standards, no crime was committed in exposing her as a CIA official. And even had she been, they continue, certainly no damage could have been done by her exposure (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). When Wilson decided to publish his New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003), the lawyers write, he “eliminated whatever shreds of anonymity” Plame Wilson retained. The lawyers conclude that “the revelation of Ms. Plame [Wilson]‘s connection to the CIA was a public service, neither criminal nor unethical.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/4/2005]

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas writes a profile of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who is now suspected of leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Thomas writes that he doubts either Cheney or Libby were “conspiring to trash” former ambassador Joseph Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA officer. Instead, Thomas writes, “it is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic. It’s also a good bet that they did not foresee the disastrous consequences of their conversation (see (June 12, 2003)), as well as a series of others between Libby and government officials and several reporters in the summer of 2003. Libby, as well as his boss, operated, at least in their own minds, on a higher plane.” Thomas paints Libby as committed to “duty and honor,” and identifying with “Roman centurions and Plato’s Men of Silver, idealized guardians who cared nothing for celebrity or money but lived only to serve.” Libby idealizes former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and has compared Cheney to Churchill, who defied English politicians in the 1930s to agitate against the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler. So, too, is Cheney taking definitive action against the rising threat of Islamist terrorism, Thomas writes, and Libby is determined to assist him. Outing Plame Wilson was “foolish” and centered in “hubris,” Thomas notes, but puts it down to Libby’s “heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history,” and his going over the line in service to his country. “[I]t is… likely that Libby was caught up in an ancient trap of the best and the brightest,” Thomas writes, “the belief that they do not have to play by normal rules when they serve a higher calling, and that small lies can be told to protect higher truths.” [Newsweek, 11/7/2005]

The National Review publishes an editorial by Cesar Conda, an assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney from January 2001 to September 2003. Conda writes a glowing defense of indicted perjurer Lewis Libby, whom he worked with in Cheney’s office. Conda notes that he was not “personally close” to Libby, and says he has not spoken to him since December 2004. Conda claims no access to the Libby defense team, nor any knowledge of the Libby defense strategy. However, he writes, “I have my own observations of the man, and some commonsense arguments that should to be considered as they relate to the indictment.” Conda calls the portrayal of Libby in special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of him (see October 28, 2005) a “caricature” that “is utterly at odds with his professional and personal history.” Libby, Conda writes, “is honorable, discreet, selfless—a man of unquestionable integrity. Most of his professional career has been spent in public service, as a behind-the-scenes, yet invaluable staffer at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.” Libby served in Cheney’s office “at great personal sacrifice,” according to Conda, choosing to leave “a lucrative private law practice” and “compromis[ing] family time with his two grade-school children—to focus his energies on his all consuming job in the White House.” Conda goes into detail about Libby’s overwhelming workload, a key element of the Libby defense team’s “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). According to Conda, Libby should be expected to misremember some “fleeting” conversations he may have had with reporters about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s wife, CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, July 10 or 11, 2003, October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Conda claims that Wilson is at the heart of the Libby indictment, and accuses him of falsifying his report about the Iraq-Niger uranium hoax (see March 4-5, 2002 and July 6, 2003). Conda concludes by praising Libby as a man whose “noble” goal was “to protect the American people from terrorism.” [National Review, 11/10/2005]

Critics of the Bush administration, and of the reporters who helped push its narrative regarding the Iraq invasion, lambast Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for failing to reveal himself as a recipient of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see June 13, 2003, November 14, 2005, and November 16-17, 2005) while himself attacking the Plame Wilson investigation (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, and October 27, 2005). Joshua Micah Marshall writes that while the story of Woodward’s involvement remains “sketchy,” it appears “that Woodward—who has long been publicly critical of the Fitzgerald investigation—has been part of it from the beginning. Literally, the beginning.… At a minimum, though, Woodward seems to have some explaining to do, at least for the fact that he became an aggressive commentator on the leak story without ever disclosing his own role in it, not even to his editors.” [Talking Points Memo, 11/15/2005] The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum calls Woodward’s behavior “bizarre,” and says, “I can’t begin to make sense of this.” [Washington Monthly, 11/17/2005] The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz asks, “Who was this Shallow Throat, and why is this the first we’re hearing about it?” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005] Liberal author and blogger Jane Hamsher is particularly caustic in her criticism, writing: “Woodward stopped being a ‘journalist’ in the true sense of the word long ago—when he decided celebrity status and book sales meant more than the truth. He has gone from being—well, whatever he was, to something much worse: an official peddler of lies told by powerful people to whitewash their criminal activities.” [Jane Hamsher, 11/15/2005] And John Aravosis of the liberal AmericaBlog writes: “It’s also beginning to sound a lot like Bob Woodward is becoming our next Judith Miller (see October 16, 2005). His repeated rants in defense of this administration, and against the special prosecutor, certainly take on a very interesting edge considering Mr. Woodward didn’t bother disclosing that he was quite involved in this story, and was hardly the impartial observer his silence suggested he was. Not to mention, he knew all along that HE TOO had received the leak, suggesting that a clear pattern of multiple leaks was developing, yet he still went on TV and said that all of these repeated leaks were just a slip of the tongue?” (Emphasis in the original.) [John Aravosis, 11/15/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward acknowledges testifying in the Plame Wilson investigation (see November 14, 2005), and apologizes to the Post for failing to tell editors and publishers that a senior Bush administration official told him over two years ago that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA officer (see June 13, 2003). Woodward is a reporter and assistant managing editor at the Post. While speculation has been rife over which reporters knew of Plame Wilson’s identity, and which administration officials are responsible for blowing her covert status, Woodward has never admitted to being a recipient of the leaked information, and has repeatedly attacked the investigation (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, and October 27, 2005). Woodward explains that he did not reveal his own involvement in the case—that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage informed him of Plame Wilson’s CIA status—because he feared being subpoenaed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Woodward says he was trying to protect his sources. “That’s job number one in a case like this,” he says. “I hunkered down. I’m in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn’t want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed.” Woodward told his editors about his knowledge of the case shortly after former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice (see October 28, 2005). [Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 11/17/2005]Woodward 'Should Have Come Forward' - Executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. says Woodward “made a mistake.… [H]e still should have come forward, which he now admits. We should have had that conversation.… I’m concerned that people will get a mis-impression about Bob’s value to the newspaper and our readers because of this one instance in which he should have told us sooner.” Downie adds: “After Libby was indicted, [Woodward] noticed how his conversation with the source preceded the timing in the indictment. He’s been working on reporting around that subject ever since the indictment.” Questions of Objectivity, Honesty - Woodward’s silence about his own involvement while repeatedly denigrating the investigation causes many to question his objectivity. “It just looks really bad,” says Eric Boehlert, an author and media critic. “It looks like what people have been saying about Bob Woodward for the past five years, that he’s become a stenographer for the Bush White House” (see November 25, 2002). Journalism professor Jay Rosen says flatly, “Bob Woodward has gone wholly into access journalism.” And Robert Zelnick, chair of Boston University’s journalism department, says: “It was incumbent upon a journalist, even one of Woodward’s stature, to inform his editors.… Bob is justifiably an icon of our profession—he has earned that many times over—but in this case his judgment was erroneous.” Rem Rieder, the editor of American Journalism Review, says Woodward’s disclosure is “stunning… [it] seems awfully reminiscent of what we criticized Judith Miller for.” Miller, a reporter for the New York Times, was accused by Times executive editor Bill Keller of misleading the paper by not informing her editors that she had discussed Plame Wilson’s identity with Libby (see October 16, 2005). Rieder calls Woodward “disingenuous” for his criticism of the investigation (see July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, and October 27, 2005) without revealing his own knowledge of the affair. Columnist and reporter Josh Marshall notes, “By becoming a partisan in the context of the leak case without revealing that he was at the center of it, really a party to it, he wasn’t being honest with his audience.” Woodward claims he only realized his conversation with Armitage might be of some significance after Libby was described in the indictment as the first Bush official to reveal Plame Wilson’s name to reporters. Armitage told Woodward of Plame Wilson’s identity weeks before Libby told Miller. Unlike Libby, Armitage did not release Woodward from his promise to protect his identity (see September 15, 2005). [Washington Post, 11/17/2005]Woodward Denies Quid Pro Quo - Some time later, a colleague will ask Woodward if he were trading information with Armitage on a friendly, perhaps less-than-professional basis. “Was this a case of being in a relationship where you traded information with a friend?” Woodward will respond sharply: “It’s not trading information. It is a subterranean narrative. What do you have? What do you know? If you start making this a criminal act, people will not speak to you.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2006]

The conservative Washington Times demands that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald drop his prosecution of former White House official Lewis Libby. The editorial joins a guest editorial from two Washington lawyers on the Times’s editorial page making similar demands (see November 17, 2005). As in the lawyers’ op-ed, the Times highlights recent testimony by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that he was told of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status before Libby leaked it to the press (see November 14, 2005). Moreover, the Times asserts that Woodward has stated he may have told Libby about Plame Wilson. Together, Woodward’s revelations have “bl[own] a gigantic hole in Patrick Fitzgerald’s recently unveiled indictment of the vice president’s former chief of staff,” the Times concludes. Like the lawyers, the Times’s editorial writers say that Libby merely misremembered the identity of the reporter who told him of Plame Wilson’s identity, confusing Woodward with NBC’s Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). And again echoing the lawyers, the Times’s editorial writers argue that “it is at least doubtful whether a reasonable jury would find Mr. Libby guilty.” Therefore, the editorial concludes, “Mr. Fitzgerald should do the right thing and promptly dismiss the indictment of Scooter Libby.” [Washington Times, 11/17/2005]

Neoconservative John Podhoretz adds his voice to the recent demands from conservatives for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to drop his prosecution of former White House official Lewis Libby (see November 10, 2005, November 17, 2005, November 17, 2005, and November 17, 2005). Podhoretz calls Fitzgerald’s investigation an “inquisition,” and, like many of his fellow commentators, points to the recent revelation that reporter Bob Woodward received leaked information about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status before Libby leaked it to a different reporter (see November 14, 2005). In his indictment of Libby (see October 28, 2005), Fitzgerald said that Libby was “the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter” when he told former New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald did not know then that another, as-yet-unnamed government official (later revealed to be former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—see June 13, 2003) had “outed” Plame Wilson before Libby. Therefore, Podhoretz concludes, there is no evidence that Libby knowingly lied to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) in denying his leaks of Plame Wilson’s identity. “How can it be fair to convict Libby when even the prosecutor himself can’t get the story straight?” Podhoretz asks. [New York Post, 11/18/2005]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado files a lawsuit on behalf of two Denver residents whom the organization says were unlawfully removed from a town hall event featuring President Bush because of an anti-war bumper sticker on their car (see March 21, 2005). The incident denied the plaintiffs their First Amendment rights, the ACLU argues. ACLU attorney Chris Hansen, representing the two plaintiffs, says, “The government should not be in the business of silencing Americans who are perceived to be critical of certain policy decisions.” The president should be willing to be in the same room with people who might disagree with him, especially at a public, taxpayer-funded town hall.” The lawsuit claims that plaintiffs Leslie Weise and Alex Young “were removed from the event solely because of their perceived political views.” Weise says: “What was supposed to be an historic opportunity for us to attend an event with a sitting president quickly turned into a humiliating and frightening experience. We had every right to attend the president’s event, and have decided to fight back to protect the Constitutional rights of all Americans.” White House event staffer Michael Casper, who the plaintiffs thought was a Secret Service agent during the incident, is named as a defendant, along with Denver resident Jay Bob Klinkerman and five as-yet-unidentified White House event staffers. The legal director for ACLU Colorado, Mark Silverstein, says: “We believe that our clients were expelled from this public meeting on the basis of a policy formulated in Washington and implemented throughout the country. This case is not just about two people, it is about protecting the rights and liberties of every single American.” The ACLU says similar events have happened in Arizona, North Dakota, and New Hampshire. [American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado, 11/21/2005 ]

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz profiles Bob Woodward, the Post reporter and managing editor who has gone from trailblazing investigative reporter during the Watergate days (see June 15, 1974) to protecting Bush administration sources and lambasting the Plame Wilson investigation while concealing his own involvement as a leak recipient (see November 15-17, 2005 and November 16-17, 2005). “Three decades older and millions of dollars richer, Woodward still has plenty of secret sources, but they work in the highest reaches of the Bush administration,” Kurtz writes. “They are molding history rather than revealing Watergate-style corruption. Some have even used the press to strike back against a critic of their war by revealing the identity of a CIA operative. And the public is no longer as enamored of reporters and their unnamed informants.… In today’s polarized political atmosphere, Woodward’s journalistic methods have been assailed by those who view him as dependent on the Bush inner circle for the narratives that drive his bestsellers.” Kurtz quotes Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. as saying that Woodward “has gone from being someone who was on the outside to someone who has such access, who’s famous, who’s recognized on the street, who’s treated by celebrities and very high officials as an equal.… [H]is access has produced a lot of information about the inner workings of this White House, the Clinton White House, the first Bush administration, and documents, actual documents, that nobody else has gotten.” Downie says that Woodward has admitted to withholding newsworthy information for his books, and has promised to write in a more timely fashion for the Post when he receives such information. But Kurtz then quotes journalism professor Jay Rosen: “Woodward for so long was a symbol of adversarial journalism because of the Watergate legend. But he really has become an access journalist, someone who’s an insider.” David Gergen, a Harvard professor and editor at US News and World Report, says of Woodward: “I do think that Bob’s politics have changed some over the years. He’s much more sympathetic to the establishment, especially the Republican establishment.” Mary Matalin, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, says: “There is a really deep respect for his work, and a deep desire by [President Bush] to have a contemporaneous, historically accurate account. The president rightly believed that Woodward, for good and ill, warts and all, would chronicle what happened. It’s in the White House’s interest to have a neutral source writing the history of the way Bush makes decisions. That’s why the White House gives him access.” [Washington Post, 11/28/2005] Author and media critic Frank Rich will note that “some of what Woodward wrote was ‘in the White House’s interest’ had to be the understatement of the year. Dubious cherry-picked intelligence from the Feith-WHIG conveyor belt (see August 2002) ended up in Plan of Attack (see Summer 2003) before that information was declassified.… No wonder Matalin thought Woodward had done ‘an extraordinary job.’ The WHIG gang had spun him silly.” [Rich, 2006, pp. 192]

The New York Sun exhorts its readers to contribute to the Lewis Libby defense fund (see After October 28, 2005). The Sun, in an op-ed, calls the Libby Legal Defense Fund “a distinguished, bipartisan group” formed to help pay the legal expenses for Libby, whom the Sun says “is the target of a witch hunt by a special counsel,” Patrick Fitzgerald. The government should be paying for Libby’s legal expenses, the editorial states: “After all, he is being prosecuted for carrying out his official duties, defending the president’s agenda on the war in Iraq against an effort to undermine it by the president’s political and ideological rivals. There is no suggestion whatsoever by the prosecutor that Mr. Libby sought to use his political office for private gain.” The editorial goes on to call the case against Libby “frivolous,” and says Americans of all political stripes should consider donating to Libby’s defense, whether they be “a neoconservative who believes that the Iraq war spread freedom… a defender of the freedom of the press who believes that government officials in America should be free to talk to the press without fear of being thrown in prison by a prosecutor… a Clinton loyalist who remembers how special prosecutors were used against the previous administration… a believer in a strong presidency who thinks the whole idea of criminalizing policy differences has a tendency to sap the boldness of the president [, or] a believer in the underdog and want Mr. Libby to have a fair fight against the special prosecutor.” [New York Sun, 12/8/2005]

The authors of a new media study say that they were “surprised” to find how much of a “liberal bias” exists in the American press. The study will later be found to be fundamentally flawed in its methodology and its conclusions (see December 2004). Even the Wall Street Journal and the right-wing Internet media and gossip outlet the Drudge Report are liberally biased, authors Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo find. The most centrist media outlet of the ones studied is, the authors claim, PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The news report on the study, by the UCLA Newsroom, claims the report is “the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.” Groseclose says: “I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican. But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.” Milyo adds, “Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left.” The news report explains that the authors “based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker’s support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where ‘100’ is the most liberal and ‘0’ is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low-population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average US voter. Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants—most of them college students—to scour US media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of US lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo’s method assigned both a similar ADA score.” “A media person would have never done this study,” Groseclose says. “It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don’t think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to Congressional speeches.” According to the study, the “leftward tilt” of news broadcasts by ABC and CBS is “nearly perfectly balanced” by the slight rightward tilt of Fox News. “Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers,” Groseclose says. “Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity—politicians.” [UCLA Newsroom, 12/14/2005]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on CBS, “We’ve teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it’s going to come together.” [CBS News, 12/18/2005 ; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

The media discovers a study from late 2004 purporting to show that the mainstream media in the US is heavily biased towards liberal views (see December 2004 and December 14, 2005). On December 19, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, a conservative, interviews one of the study’s authors, Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Milyo repeats the study’s contention that news outlets such as CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal are heavily liberal in their coverage. Carlson calls the statement “terrifying.” Milyo repeats the assertion often made by conservatives that most reporters “tend to be about as liberal as the voters in Berkeley, California.… And the same is true in academia too, by the way, and you know, so that doesn’t mean that those preconceptions or biases or favoritism infects the job that people do.” [MSNBC, 12/19/2005] The study is also cited on the December 19 edition of Fox News’s morning show, Fox and Friends[Fox News, 12/19/2005; Media Matters, 12/21/2005] , and that evening on Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume. [Fox News, 12/19/2005] Several other press outlets, such as CBS News, the Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal, and Investors Business Daily also report on the study. [Media Matters, 12/21/2005] On December 20, CNN commentator Jack Cafferty tells viewers: “Let’s talk about media bias. It’s real, according to a new study led by the University of California at Los Angeles, which shows there is a strong liberal bias. Well, there’s a bulletin. Researchers found out that of 20 main media outlets, 18 scored to the left of center. The most liberal of all were the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, not the editorial pages, the news pages. Followed two, three, and four by the CBS Evening News, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. In this study, only Special Report with Brit Hume over there on the F-word network [Fox News] and the Washington Times scored to the right of the average voter. The most centrist media outlets in the country, The News Hour With Jim Lehrer and USA Today.” [CNN, 12/20/2005]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on PBS: “We’re at the beginning of, I think, the decisive, I would say six months in Iraq, okay, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately… what Iraqis make of it.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman writes: “The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful.” [New York Times, 12/21/2005; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

Reporter Arlene Getz equates President Bush’s attempt at controlling the media exposure of the warrantless wiretapping program (see December 15, 2005 and December 6, 2005) to similar media manipulation programs undertaken by the white apartheid regime in South Africa during the 1980s, and the acceptance of the controlled media by some South African citizens. Getz, who reported extensively on South Africa’s government, writes: “For anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is always a given. But US citizens have always been lucky enough to believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of US civil liberties?” She extends the comparison: “While Bush uses the rhetoric of ‘evildoers’ and the ‘global war on terror,’ Pretoria talked of ‘total onslaught.’ This was the catchphrase of P. W. Botha, South Africa’s head of state from 1978 to 1989.…Botha liked to tell South Africans that the country was under ‘total onslaught’ from forces both within and without, and that this global assault was his rationale for allowing opponents to be jailed, beaten or killed. Likewise, the Bush administration has adopted the argument that anything is justified in the name of national security.” [Newsweek, 12/21/2005]

The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones and Co., issues a statement that challenges the findings of a recent study claiming that the Journal is one of the most “liberally biased” news outlets in America (see December 2004 and December 14, 2005). Dow Jones states: “The Wall Street Journal’s news coverage is relentlessly neutral. Of that, we are confident. By contrast, the research technique used in this study hardly inspires confidence. In fact, it is logically suspect and simply baffling in some of its details. First, its measure of media bias consists entirely of counting the number of mentions of, or quotes from, various think tanks that the researchers determine to be ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative.’ By this logic, a mention of al-Qaeda in a story suggests the newspaper endorses its views, which is obviously not the case. And if a think tank is explicitly labeled ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ within a story to provide context to readers, that example doesn’t count at all. The researchers simply threw out such mentions.” The statement criticizes the study’s failure to “characterize” a number of “important policy groups” such as, “say, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the AFL-CIO, or the Concord Coalition, but that does include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?” It goes on to call the study’s attempt to rank the various groups “simply bizarre.” The statement concludes, “Suffice it to say that ‘research’ of this variety would be unlikely to warrant a mention at all in any Wall Street Journal story.” [Poynter Online, 12/21/2005]

Rush Limbaugh is quoted in the book 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America as saying: “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.” The book also claims that Limbaugh told a radio audience in 1998: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.” The book does not cite a source for the alleged comments. In 2009, Limbaugh will deny making them, telling his listeners: “There’s a quote out there… that I somehow, some time ago, defended slavery and started cracking jokes about it. And, you know, you say a lot of things in the course of 15 hours a week, over the course of 21 years. We’ve gone back, we have looked at everything we have. There is not even an inkling that any words in this quote are accurate. It’s outrageous, but it’s totally predictable. It’s being repeated by people who have never listened to this program, they certainly didn’t hear it said themselves because it was never said.” [Snopes (.com), 10/13/2009]

Dr. James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top climate scientist, reveals that the Bush administration ordered NASA’s public affairs staff to review his lectures, papers, Web site postings, and interview requests after he gave a lecture calling for the reduction of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. “They feel their job is to be the censor of information going out to the public,” Hansen says, and he promises to ignore the restrictions. NASA denies trying to silence Hansen, saying the restrictions apply to all NASA officials, and adds that it is inappropriate for government scientists to make policy statements (see Between June 2003 and October 2003, (January 2006), and (Late January 2006)). [Savage, 2007, pp. 106] This is not the first time Hansen has gone public about government attempts to censor and muzzle him and his fellows (see October 2004, October 26, 2004, and February 10, 2006).

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on the Oprah Winfrey Show: “I think that we’re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool’s errand.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

Lewis Libby’s defense team files a motion with the US District Court to compel the discovery of documents and materials relating to a number of journalists in Libby’s upcoming trial (see January 20, 2006). The filing includes a request for the prosecution to turn over all the information it obtained from reporters about their confidential conversations with Bush administration sources in the course of its investigation. “There can be no information more material to the defense of a perjury case than information tending to show that the alleged false statements are, in fact, true or that they could be the result of mistake or confusion,” the lawyers argue. “Libby is entitled to know what the government knows.” After complaining that the prosecution has refused to provide numerous classified documents the defense has requested (see January 23, 2006), and reiterating its requests for a huge number of White House and CIA documents (see December 14, 2005), the motion asks that documents relating to NBC bureau chief Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003), Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003 and 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (see November 14, 2005) be released to the defense. The defense also indicates its interest in information about NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and the Post’s Walter Pincus. [Washington Post, 1/27/2006; New York Times, 1/27/2006; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 1/26/2009 ] Washington lawyer Charles Tobin says that the Libby defense move was expected, and is a result of the prosecution’s aggressive insistence on deposing journalists and forcing them to reveal confidential sources. “I think we could have expected that, when the prosecutor went on a fishing expedition, that the fish he caught would want to look back in the pail,” Tobin says. “The more this case develops, the further we seem to be getting from the core issues of the indictment—and more into the business of journalism and how news gets put out in this town.” [Washington Post, 1/27/2006]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on CBS: “I think we’re in the end game there, in the next three to six months… We’ve got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they’re going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they’re not, in which case I think the bottom’s going to fall out.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

The Family Research Council, an organization of religious and social conservatives, sends a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) protesting a department Web site that for six years has provided the public with information about gay-related health issues. Two weeks later, the entire Web site disappears. [Savage, 2007, pp. 106]

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defends a Pentagon program that has been planting pro-US stories (see September 2004-September 2006) in the Iraqi press. “The US military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the US embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate; for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story—a true story—but paying to print a story. For example, the resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative, to stop, just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.” [Council of Foreign Relations, 2/17/2006]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on NBC: “I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

The Washington Post reports that leaked documents show the US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to exaggerate the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to the Post, “The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the [Iraq] war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” According to Col. Derek Harvey, who has been a top advisor on Iraq intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although al-Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted some deadly bombing attacks, they remain “a very small part of the actual numbers…. Our own focus on al-Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will—made him more important than he really is, in some ways.” Since at least 2004, the US military has manipulated the Iraq media’s coverage of Zarqawi in an effort to turn Iraqis against the insurgency. But leaked documents also explicitly list the “US Home Audience” as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign. Additionally, sections of leaked military briefings show that the US media was directly used to influence view of al-Zarqawi. For instance, one document notes that a “selective leak” about al-Zarqawi was made to New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, which resulted in a 2004 front page story about a letter supposedly written by al-Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq (see February 9, 2004). [Washington Post, 4/10/2006] The Daily Telegraph reported in 2004 that “senior diplomats in Baghdad claim that the letter was almost certainly a hoax.” The Telegraph also reported the US was buying extremely dubious intelligence that exaggerated al-Zarqawi’s role and was treating it as fact, even in policy decisions (see October 4, 2004). [Daily Telegraph, 10/4/2004] One US military briefing from 2004 states, “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response” and lists three methods: “Media operations,” “Special Ops (626)” (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite US military unit) and “PSYOP,” meaning psychological operations and propaganda. One internal US military briefing concluded that the “al-Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date… primarily for the Iraqi audience but also with the international audience.” It is supposedly US military policy not to aim psychological operations at Americans, but there appears to be no punishment for the violation of this policy in the wake of this media report. [Washington Post, 4/10/2006]

After several of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s former generals go public with devastating critiques of Rumsfeld’s strategies and planning in Iraq in what comes to be nicknamed the “Generals’ Revolt,” Rumsfeld determines to use the Pentagon’s “military analysts” (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) to counter the storm of negative publicity. He has his aides summon a clutch of analysts for a briefing with him (see April 18, 2006); his office reminds one aide that “the boss” wants the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.” Pentagon officials help two Fox analysts, former generals Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely, write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “In Defense of Donald Rumsfeld.” Vallely sends an e-mail to the Pentagon, “Starting to write it now,” and soon thereafter adds, “Any input for the article will be much appreciated.” Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwards Vallely a list of talking points and specifics. Shortly thereafter, a Pentagon official reports, “Vallely is going to use the numbers.” But on April 16, the New York Times, which has learned of the plan, publishes a front-page story about it, sending Pentagon officials into damage-control mode. They describe the session with McInerney and Vallely as “routine,” and issue internal directives to keep communications with analysts “very formal.” One official warns subordinates, “This is very, very sensitive now.” [New York Times, 4/20/2008; Washington Post, 4/21/2008]

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviews one of its military analysts, retired Army General James “Spider” Marks. Blitzer asks Marks if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever rejected “recommendations from military commanders for more troops.” Marks replies: “Sure. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that’s been documented if you read General [Tommy] Franks’s book [American Soldier], and the current book, Cobra II [by Michael Gordon and another military analyst, Bernard Trainor], indicates very, very clearly, and in fact, that is in fact what happened. We requested the 1st Cavalry Division. That was denied. At a very critical point in the war, I might say. The metric that was established then was success against the Republican Guard and Saddam [Hussein]‘s forces when clearly the desired end state was what’s going to happen after the forces have been dealt with, and what do you do when you’ve got this military presence in Iraq. Clearly, the presence of more combat forces on the ground would have been needed.” [CNN, 4/16/2006] Later, during a Pentagon briefing of a gathering of military analysts, Rumsfeld will claim that he never denied any such troop increases, but that commanders such as Marks refused to accept additional troops (see Late December, 2006).

David Grange. [Source: CNN]CNN airs commentary from three of its “independent military analysts,” some of whom will later be cited as participants in the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). The analysts are retired Army Brigadier General James “Spider” Marks (whom CNN will later fire for conflicts of interest—see July 2007), retired Air Force Major General Donald Shepperd, and retired US Army Brigadier General David Grange. The topic is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and whether he should resign. After Marks confirms that Rumsfeld repeatedly refused requests from field commanders to send more troops into Iraq during critical battlefield moments (see April 16, 2006), CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer raises the issue of other retired generals calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation. Grange - Grange dismisses the resignation demands as coming from “a small number of general officers…” Grange says he does not have a close relationship with Rumsfeld, but admits that he participates in “occasional” briefings with Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials. Grange says “it would be inappropriate [for Rumsfeld] to step down right now,” and adds that it really isn’t the generals’ business to make any such recommendations. Shepperd - Blitzer plays the commentary of retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, who blames Rumsfeld for not putting “enough boots on the ground to prosecute” the Iraq war and has also called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, then asks Shepperd for his commentary. Shepperd, one of the most reliable of the Pentagon’s “independent analysts” (see June 24-25, 2005), says while Rumsfeld made some “misjudgments,” he should not resign. Like Grange, he questions the “propriety” of the retired generals’ speaking out on the subject. “It steps over, in my opinion, the line of the role of military general officers, active or retired, calling for the resignation of a duly appointed representative of the government by a duly elected government. That’s the problem I have with all of this. And it’s hard to have a rational discussion because you quickly get into, is the war going well or not, do we or do we not have enough troops, when the question is one of propriety about these statements.” Marks - Marks adds his voice to the chorus, saying that “it’s not the place of retired general officers or anyone to make that statement.…[T]he country’s at war. You need to rally around those doing their best to prosecute it.” Though Marks stands with both Grange and Shepperd in defending Rumsfeld from calls for his resignation, he does note that he retired from the Army in part because of Rumsfeld’s cavalier treatment of two of his close friends, retired General Eric Shinseki (see February 25, 2003 and February 27, 2003) and General David McKiernan. [CNN, 4/16/2006]

Smarting from the media criticism sparked by the “Generals’ Revolt” and the subsequent revelation of Pentagon attempts to manipulate the media in response (see April 14-16, 2006), about 17 military analysts (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) meet with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Peter Pace. The subject, according to a transcript of the session, is how to marginalize war critics and pump up public support for the war. (Only Rumsfeld and Pace are identified by name in the transcript.) One analyst says bluntly: “I’m an old intel guy. And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops [psychological operations]. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’” Rumsfeld cuts the analyst off with a sarcastic comment: “What are you, some kind of a nut? You don’t believe in the Constitution?” Rumsfeld’s words draw laughter. Few of the participants discuss any of the actual criticism from the former generals. 'Illegal or Immoral'? - Interestingly, Rumsfeld acknowledges that he has been warned that his “information operations” are possibly “illegal or immoral.” He retorts: “This is the first war that’s ever been run in the 21st century in a time of 24-hour news and bloggers and internets and emails and digital cameras and Sony cams and God knows all this stuff.… We’re not very skillful at it in terms of the media part of the new realities we’re living in. Every time we try to do something someone says it’s illegal or immoral, there’s nothing the press would rather do than write about the press, we all know that. They fall in love with it. So every time someone tries to do some information operations for some public diplomacy or something, they say oh my goodness, it’s multiple audiences and if you’re talking to them, they’re hearing you here as well and therefore that’s propagandizing or something.” [US Department of Defense, 4/18/2006 ]Iraq Losses 'Relative' in Comparison to 9/11 - The analysts, one after the other, tell Rumsfeld how “brilliant” and “successful” his war strategy is, and blame the news media for shaping the public’s negative opinion about the war. One participant says, “Frankly, from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes [referring to the 9/11 attacks], is relative.” An analyst says: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a regime over there that’s not a threat to us.” Rumsfeld agrees with the assessments. The biggest danger, the analysts agree, is not in Iraq, but in the public perceptions. The administration will suffer grave political damage if the perception of the war is not altered. “America hates a loser,” one analyst says. 'Crush These People' - Most of the session centers on ways Rumsfeld can reverse the “political tide.” One analyst urges Rumsfeld to “just crush these people,” and assures him that “most of the gentlemen at the table” would enthusiastically support him if he did. “You are the leader,” the analyst tells Rumsfeld. “You are our guy.” Another analyst suggests: “In one of your speeches you ought to say, ‘Everybody stop for a minute and imagine an Iraq ruled by al-Zarqawi.’ And then you just go down the list and say, ‘All right, we’ve got oil, money, sovereignty, access to the geographic center of gravity of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.’ If you can just paint a mental picture for Joe America to say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine a world like that.’” Several of the analysts want to know what “milestone” they should cite as the next goal; they want to, as one puts it, “keep the American people focused on the idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” The suggestion is to focus on establishing a new and stable Iraqi government. Another analyst notes, “When you said ‘long war,’ you changed the psyche of the American people to expect this to be a generational event.” They are also keenly interested in how to push the idea of a war with Iran. When the meeting ends, an obviously pleased Rumsfeld takes the entire group and shows them treasured keepsakes from his life. Desired Results - The results are almost immediate. The analysts take to the airwaves and, according to the Pentagon’s monitoring system (see 2005 and Beyond), repeat almost verbatim the Pentagon’s talking points: that Rumsfeld is consulting “frequently and sufficiently” with his generals; that Rumsfeld is not “overly concerned” with the criticisms of his leadership; and that their briefing focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government. Days later, Rumsfeld will write himself a memo distilling the analysts’ advice into bullet points. Two are underlined: “Focus on the Global War on Terror—not simply Iraq. The wider war—the long war” and “Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.” 'Total Disrespect' - At least one analyst is not pleased. ABC’s William Nash, a retired general, will recall, “I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions.” [New York Times, 4/20/2008]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within a matter of months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on CNN: “Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don’t, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we’re in the end game in the sense it’s going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there’s an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us.” [CNN, 4/23/2006; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

Many of the retired military officers who appear on television news shows as “independent media analysts” are willing participants in the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). However, not all are as compliant as the Pentagon would like, and as a result, they are denied the kinds of access that other, more “reliable” analysts receive. One analyst, Greg Kittfield, writes a cover story for the National Journal that features criticism by several retired generals of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In return, Pentagon official Bryan Whitman e-mails his colleagues, saying, “Given this cover story by Kittfield, I don’t think we need to find any time for Kittfield on the Secretary’s calender.” [Salon, 5/9/2008]

Continuing his trend of predicting a resolution in Iraq within six months—a trend that has been ongoing since at least November 2003 (see May 6-11, 2006)—New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says on MSNBC’s Hardball, “Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.” [MSNBC, 5/12/2006; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/16/2006]

Memo from Dallas Lawrence citing “karl and dorrance smith.” [Source: US Department of Defense] (click image to enlarge)Pentagon official Allison Barber circulates a memo destined for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Dorrance Smith. The memo suggests that “[b]ased on the success of our previous trips to Iraq with the Retired Military Analysts, I would like to propose another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Smith is referencing the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond), which uses retired military officers as “military analysts” for the various television news channels to promote the Pentagon and White House’s Iraq policies. The same day, Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence, who is directly involved in the propaganda operation (see June 21, 2005 and June 24, 2005), replies to Barber’s memo. Lawrence advises Barber to drop the request for an Afghanistan tour because it may not happen, and by leaving it out of the proposal, “we (you) won’t find yourself having to explain why it didn’t happen after he briefed it to karl at the weekly meeting.” The reference to “karl” cannot be proven to be White House political adviser Karl Rove, but, as Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald will note in 2008, “In the documents I reviewed, I haven’t seen any other ‘Karl’ referenced who works at the [Defense Department]. These are fairly high-ranking [Defense Department] officials and there aren’t many people they’re worried about having to explain themselves to (Smith’s position as Assistant Defense Secretary was one requiring Senate confirmation and he reported to Rumsfeld). Given the significant possibility that this program was illegal (see April 28, 2008 and May 6, 2008), and given [White House Press Secretary Dana] Perino’s denial of the White House’s knowledge of it (see April 30, 2008), this question—whether the ‘karl’ being briefed on the program was Karl Rove—certainly seems to be one that should be asked.” The likelihood that Rove is indeed involved in the propaganda program is bolstered by other Defense Department e-mails from Lawrence and other officials noting that they are attempting to have both President Bush and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (see April 30, 2008), an idea that “was submitted to karl and company from dorrance smith last week.” Greenwald will write that due to the proposed involvement of Bush and Hadley, the “karl” of the memos must by necessity be Karl Rove. If true, Rove’s involvement means that the White House is directly involved in a highly unethical and probably illegal (see April 28, 2008) domestic propaganda operation. [Salon, 5/16/2008]

E-mail from Jeffrey McCauseland. [Source: US Department of Defense] (click image to enlarge)The Pentagon holds a private briefing for a select group of military analysts (see January 14, 2005) on the topic of the Haditha shootings and investigations, involving several US Marines shooting two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians. After the briefing, one analyst, retired General Jeffrey McCauseland, appears on CNN to discuss the shootings. He e-mails a Pentagon official (whose name is redacted from the e-mail) after his appearance and says: “Just wanted to thank you again because the material you sent me very early this morning was very useful in trying to explain what is going on and trying to put the best possible face on it. You are a pro…” [Salon, 5/12/2008]

The New York Times’s foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, recently lambasted for predicting a resolution in Iraq “within six months” at least 14 times for nearly three years (see May 6-11, 2006), explains the rationale behind his predictions to CNN’s Howard Kurtz. Friedman says: “[T]he problem with analyzing the story, Howie, is that it doesn’t—everyone, first of all, this is the most polarized story I’ve certainly written about, so everyone wants, basically, to be proven right, OK? So the left—people who hated the war, they want you to declare the war is over, finish, we give up. The right, just the opposite. But I’ve been trying to just simply track the situation on the ground. And the fact is that the outcome there is unclear, and I reflected that in my column. And I will continue to reflect.… The story’s evolving. And what strikes me as I see it evolve, when it drags on, six months after an election we still don’t have a government. Then, as a columnist who’s offering opinions on what I think the right policy is, it seems to me we have to be telling Iraqis we are not going to be here forever, providing a kind of floor under the chaos, while you dicker over the most minute things when American lives are at stake. So I think it’s a constantly evolving thing.” [CNN, 6/11/2006]

At a campaign luncheon for Representative Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Vice President Dick Cheney lambasts the New York Times for reporting information that the administration wants kept secret. “Some in the press, in particular the New York Times, have made it harder to defend America against attack by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs,” he says. “First they reported the terrorist surveillance program (see March 2002), which monitors international communications when one end is outside the United States and one end is connected with or associated with al-Qaeda. Now the Times has disclosed the terrorist financial tracking program. On both occasions, the Times had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials (see December 15, 2005). They went ahead anyway. The leaks to the New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging to our national security. The ability to intercept al-Qaeda communications and to track their sources of financing are essential if we’re going to successfully prosecute the global war on terror. Our capabilities in these areas help explain why we have been so successful in preventing further attacks like 9/11. And putting this information on the front page makes it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks. Publishing this highly classified information about our sources and methods for collecting intelligence will enable the terrorists to look for ways to defeat our efforts. These kinds of stories also adversely affect our relationships with people who work with us against the terrorists. In the future, they will be less likely to cooperate if they think the United States is incapable of keeping secrets.” [White House, 6/30/2006]

Libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), contemplating a run for the 2008 presidential nomination, discusses the many federal programs, agencies, and bureaus he would eliminate if he had the power. He would do away with the CIA, the Federal Reserve, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the IRS, and the Department of Education, among others. He would eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He would abolish the federal income tax (see April 28, 1999). He would zero out federal funding for public education, leaving that to local governments. Paul recently refused to vote for federal funds to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, explaining that to do so would “rob” other Americans “in order to support the people on the coast.” He routinely votes against federal subsidies for farmers. He supports absolute gun rights, and absolutely opposes abortion, though he thinks regulations supporting or denying abortion should be left up to the states. He wants to repeal federal laws regulating drugs and allow prohibited drugs such as heroin to be sold legally. Paul says the US should withdraw from the United Nations and NATO, and wants the country to stop giving foreign aid to any country for any reason, calling such assistance “foreign welfare.” He even says President Lincoln should never have taken the nation to war to abolish slavery. Referring to the years before the income tax, Paul says: “We had a good run from 1776 to 1913. We didn’t have it; we did pretty well.” As for Social Security, “we didn’t have it until 1935,” Paul says. “I mean, do you read stories about how many people were laying in the streets and dying and didn’t have medical treatment?… Prices were low and the country was productive and families took care of themselves and churches built hospitals and there was no starvation.” Historian Michael Katz describes himself as aghast at Paul’s characterization of American life before Social Security. “Where to begin with this one?” he asks. “The stories just break your heart, the kind of suffering that people endured.… Stories of families that had literally no cash and had to kind of beg to get the most minimal forms of food, who lived in tiny, little rooms that were ill-heated and ill-ventilated, who were sick all the time, who had meager clothing.” Charles Kuffner of the Texas progressive blog Off the Kuff writes, “I can only presume that the Great Depression never occurred in whatever universe Paul inhabits.” [Washington Post, 7/9/2006; Charles Kuffner, 7/10/2006]

The Pew Center for the People and the Press finds that 34 percent of Republicans consistently watch Fox News, while 20 percent of Democrats do so. These numbers are generally consistent with study results from two years before (see June 8, 2004). [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 237]

The New York Times’s foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, recently lambasted for predicting a resolution in Iraq “within six months” at least 14 times for nearly three years (see May 6-11, 2006), finally gives up his insistence on giving Iraq “six months” to “play out.” He writes: “It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.… [T]hree years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means ‘staying the course’ is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B—how we might disengage with the least damage possible.” Iraq has finally put together its own elected government, one of the central goals of the reconstruction, and, Friedman writes, “the situation has only worsened.” Iraq is now “a lawless mess,” he writes, and to remain in Iraq is to only “throw more good lives after good lives.” A multinational “Bosnia-like peace conference” is one option, he says, but “[f]or such a conference to come about… the US would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans, and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.” Otherwise, he writes, Iraq will almost certainly “erupt into a much wider civil war, drawing in its neighbors.” Whatever the outcome of withdrawal, he writes, “[t]he longer we maintain a unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it will be to build such a coalition, and the stronger the enemies of freedom will become.” [New York Times, 8/4/2006]

Cover of ‘The Shadow Party.’ [Source: Brazos Bookstore]Authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe publish a book titled The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, that purports to prove Jewish billionaire George Soros, who finances progressive and Democratic Party causes, is in reality a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite. However, the book is riddled with doctored quotes, misinformation, factual errors, and outright lies. Progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that the book relies on long-discredited accusations from the authors’ “Front Page Magazine” Web site, from their articles on conservative Web publications such as WorldNetDaily and NewsMax, and on unsourced allegations from political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, who have called Soros a “Nazi beast-man” and a “small cog in Adolf Eichmann’s killing machine,” aiding “the Holocaust against 500,000 Hungarian Jews.” Media Matters calls the book “a new low in the long-running Republican Party and conservative movement campaign of scurrilous personal attacks against Soros, a major supporter of progressive causes in the US and abroad.” The organization also notes that the Web sites used in the book’s research are largely funded by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, and Scaife-owned newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review have promoted the book. Media Matters documents numerous issues of doctored quotes and falsified claims in the book. [Media Matters, 8/2/2006]

David Broder. [Source: Washington Post]Washington Post columnist David Broder dismisses the entire Patrick Fitzgerald investigation as nothing more than an “overblown” morass of “[c]onspiracy theories” based on “dark suspicions” that White House political strategist Karl Rove leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the public (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). According to Broder, there is no evidence that Rove either leaked Plame Wilson’s name to the press or “masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by ‘outing’ his CIA-operative wife” (see October 1, 2003). The entire issue is nothing more, Broder writes, than “a tempest in a teapot.” He says no one involved—Rove, Fitzgerald, another accused leaker, Lewis Libby, or the reporters involved, “behaved well in the whole mess,” and Broder writes that he stayed out of it except “to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources’ names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.” Critics of the Bush administration are indulging in “rants” about Rove and the White House’s approach to handling criticism, Broder writes. He concludes that reporters who criticized Rove and the White House “owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.” [Washington Post, 9/7/2006] Two months before, Novak revealed Rove as one of his sources for Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status (see July 12, 2006).

A League of the South member at a 2008 political rally. This member is wearing a button supporting the candidacy of Ron Paul (R-TX). The sign behind the supporter calls the NAACP a “racist” organization. [Source: Indyweek]Former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), an outspoken opponent of immigration, is the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a conservative organization, Americans Have Had Enough!, that lists him as its honorary chairman. Tancredo’s appearance is part of his longshot campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. The event is promoted by a neo-Confederate group, the League of the South (LOS), as being its primary sponsor. On its Web site, the LOS announces: “Congressman Tom Tancredo will be our guest. Join us at the State Museum for two hours of vital information, fellowship, and good food.” The site identifies LOS liaison Lourie Salley as the event’s information contact. The room at the museum was rented by neo-Confederate activist Richard T. Hines, a member of LOS and the openly racist Council of Conservative Citizens. Tancredo speaks from a podium draped with a Confederate battle flag, and men dressed in period Confederate battle uniforms are among the audience. Even the catering was done by Piggie Park restaurant chain owner Maurice Bessinger, a prominent LOS member who sells books defending slavery. During his speech, Tancredo speaks sharply about illegal immigrants and what he calls “the cult of multiculturalism.” He also decries those whom he says deny the “Christian principles enshrined in the US Constitution.” At the end of the speech, men in Confederate uniforms sing the Confederate anthem “Dixie,” and Tancredo joins in with the singing, though one reporter later writes that Tancredo seems “confused” by the singing of the song, and leaves the podium either during the song or shortly thereafter. After the event, Tancredo meets and confers with a number of LOS members on the steps of the museum, some of whom are dressed as Confederates. He displays some of the materials being distributed at the fundraiser, including a copy of the The Citizen’s Informer, the Council of Conservative Citizens’ newspaper. Tancredo later denies knowing anything about the history of the newspaper. After Tancredo’s appearance at the event is publicized, Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinoza denies that the LOS had any connection with the event, calling the organization “a very racist and horrible group that is desperately trying to seem relevant by attaching themselves to an event that they had nothing to do with.” Espinoza goes on to defend neo-Confederates, claiming: “These aren’t racist people who spew out hate. These are just people remembering and cherishing their past.” Five days after the event, a group of 40 black churches joins with the Latino clergy group Confianza to condemn Tancredo’s appearance. Reverend Steven Dewberry says: “To join in singing ‘Dixie,’ to walk into a room that has a huge Confederate flag in it, that should have been his notice to walk out. Their [Confederate] past is our anguish, our slavery, our lynchings.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/12/2006; Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2006]

Progressive columnist Joe Conason questions the ability of many mainstream reporters and government observers to understand the underlying reality behind the Plame Wilson identity leak. He writes that “[t]he latest developments in the case… proved once more that the simplest analysis of facts is beyond the grasp of many of America’s most celebrated journalists.” The recently published book Hubris, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, reveals that the then-Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, was apparently the first White House official to reveal the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson to a reporter (see June 13, 2003 and July 8, 2003). Unlike two other White House leakers, Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003) and Lewis Libby (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), Armitage was not sold on the idea of the Iraq invasion. Because of these facts, Conason writes, many journalists and observers have decided that Rove and Libby are both “guiltless” of any criminal or underhanded conduct, “that there was no White House effort to expose Ms. Wilson, and that the entire leak investigation was a partisan witch hunt and perhaps an abuse of discretion by the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald (see February 6, 2007). The same pundits now proclaim that Mr. Armitage’s minor role somehow proves the White House didn’t seek to punish Valerie Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, for his decision to publicly debunk the presidential misuse of dubious intelligence from Niger concerning Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase yellowcake uranium.” Conason writes that to draw such conclusions is simple-minded. “It’s a simple concept—two people or more can commit a similar act for entirely different reasons—but evidently it has flummoxed the great minds of contemporary journalism.” Armitage let Plame Wilson’s identity slip in what was apparently a gossip session. Rove and Libby, on the other hand, “sought to undermine Joe Wilson’s credibility—and perhaps to victimize him and his wife—by planting information about Valerie Wilson with two reporters.” Fitzgerald understands the difference in motivation between Armitage and Rove/Libby, Conason writes, but many journalists seem not to understand that difference. “It is a simple matter,” Conason concludes, “and yet still too challenging for the national press to understand.” [New York Observer, 9/10/2006]

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